(simy1) wrote:

As frogleg has pointed out, rotation is mostly for disease prevention.
Here in Michigan my tomatoes are virtually free of disease (big, big
difference from Georgia) and they could be planted in the same place
every year. I am guessing coastal NY is more disease prone, milder
winters and wetter growing seasons. One of my neighbours even has a
spot along a fence where cherry tomatoes and lettuce come up year
after year. She only weeds out the weeds every spring.

Coupled to rotation, what you do with your plants in the fall is also
part of the equation. You should either toss them or hotcompost them,
but that is not what I do. Sometimes I put them on the lawn and mow
them, sometimes I put them under the raspberries, and sometimes I put
them on top of my smaller beds where greens are grown, and greens are
totally immune to disease in this corner of the world.

This said, I have my tomatoes on a 3-year rotation, which I will
probably cut down to two starting next year because in the third year
I have them over three beds and that is too messy for my taste. I
could have a much longer rotation but my beds are oriented N-S and I
prefer to use only the back of the beds for the toms.

There is also the issue that different veggies deplete the soil at
different rates for different nutrients. Rotation helps even out the
load on your beds. Cabbage certainly sucks a lot of N out of the soil,
and tomatoes probably a whole lot of K.
I interplanted a decent amount (peppers, lettuces, radishes, carrots,
parsley, thyme, onion, garlic plus six types of annual flowers) so I'm
hoping to get a mix of "depletions" into this one soil bed. But
nothing was the size of these tomato vines.

If I convert the grassy slope I may move one or two of the tomatoes
there instead. See if I can replicate the success I had here.
In your case you have no choice, so keep doing what you have, make
sure you throw away the plants in the fall, and give them generous
amounts of manure.
I already purchased composted manure and humus to mix in for the
winter. I wasn't sure what plants to till into the ground. I've got
annuals, tomatoes, carrots, parsely, chives, peppers still growing in
that plot. One tomato plant has something wrong with it,
http://members.aol.com/digitalvinyl66/tomatospots.jpg
while the one next to it is growing straight through the sicker one's
cage. But whatever is wrong with it hasn't hurt it's production (48
toms/12 lbs)


DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email)
Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY, 1 mile off L.I.Sound
1st Year Gardener