"Chookie" wrote in message
news:ehrebeniuk-960216.20212707052008@news...
In article ,
"0tterbot" wrote:

have realised what my problem is re rotating the garden beds in an
organised
manner:

1: lots of brassicas. i seem to grow half brassicas & half other stuff!!
(only slight exaggeration). this makes rotation difficult! in summer,
lots
of solanacae (sp!) as well, of course, which have to be somewhere
different
each season.

You've omitted the legumes, the other big vegie garden family. If you
follow
your brassicas with solanaceae and then with legumes, you have a rotation.

it's not that i've omitted them, but rather that they don't feature in my
problem :-) i'm happy to put them whereever because i'm not concerned about
pest/disease build-up with them. (i'm not addressing _all_ the rotation
issues here, just the question of pest/disease problems from brassica being
everywhere, mainly.)

I have a similar problem in that I'm not organised enough to do proper
rotations. OTOH I plant mixtures of crops, which tend to minimise pest
problems.

sort of sounds like my "method" so far. :-)

probably setting myself up for a bumper cabbage white moth & butterfly crop
next year due to the carry-over. (???) i read recently that part of the
reason loquats went out of fashion in gardens is because they can give fruit
fly a way to be present & breeding already (the earliest spring fruit) when
the other fruits are starting to be ready & you can thus never break the
cycle. not sure about this - we had no fruit fly last year until well into
the season, despite the loquat tree, but i can see how that might happen if
you don't have lots of enthusiastic possums to eat all the loquat in record
time before you get to them yourself ;-)
kylie

"0tterbot" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message
"0tterbot" wrote in message
...
have realised what my problem is re rotating the garden beds in an
organised manner:

I try to do at least a two year rotation, but in my garden, my sloppiness
doesn't seem to have had any ill effects. I have read somewhere that if
you garden organically, it isn't vital to rotate, but who the hell knows
if that is true.

maybe not AS vital?

Prolly, but after about 8-10 years, I'm still waiting for a good dose of
potato blight on the spud bed.

i'm sure a good rotation would be better, but unsure how
to introduce it now (especially with the brassica preponderance).

it does sound logical that if i keep adding as much poo & mulch (& now
compost as it is really getting going in bulk now!!) that the effects of
being a bit slack & disorganised will be somewhat ameliorated :-)

That's my theory. So far no probs but then I do get better organised each
year too. My garden notebooks are starting to work (in a fashion).

In our case we only have 3 areas whihc I would call 'beds' and then there
is all the side stuff and permanent beds and areas still being brought
into good heart before they become beds. The tomatoes start in the bed
at the bottom of the hill and then over subsequent years move to the next
bed up the hill and then start at the bottom of the hill in the lowest
bed again. Same with corn. The poor old spuds have got a permanent bed
and so far no problems. The reason why it's permanent is that we can
never harvest them all and then when they come up, it tends to be a busy
time, we don't get tot hem and by the time we do get to them to actually
do soemthing with their area, we don't have the heart to dig them up.
Will have to do something there soon though.

i have that live-&-let-live attitude to the potatoes as well. which,
because i'm _trying_ to rotate them, seems to mean random potato plants
everywhere.

:-)) Yep. I had a thriving one come up in the middle of the tomatoes. I
haven't had spuds there for ever so I think it must have been some of my
incomplete "compost". It was a great spud plant and superb spuds too.

errr!!!!
thanks for the encouragement.

Whatever works is my motto :-))

"0tterbot" wrote in message
...
"Bill" wrote in message
...
Rotation does not have to be circular though the word suggest it.
Back and forth may give similar desired effects. In some ways I'd
suggest the word rest or Fallow may be useful. I'd recommend green
manure if you can add to your tilth.

back & forth is fine by me! it's what i've been trying to do.

genuine rotation with x always following y following z is good for plant
nutrition preferences, as i understand it. however, i'm really not trying
to do that (yet?); just not organised enough, & it hasn't started out that
way therefore harder to introduce now. maybe one day :-)

Here is the real nub of rotation with green manures that i can fathom. There
is the disease aspect but there is also the plant nutrition aspect. If for
some reason we can't get hold of fertilisers (synthetic, or poop or compost)
a proper rotation with green manures 'should' be able to keep our gardens
fertile. A nitrogen fixer can be grown and then killed off and tilled into
the garden or left as a mulch. A series of leaf, fruit & root vegetables
follow to use the nutrients before another green manure is put down. The
green manure will also add humus to the soil as it decays. For other
nutrients foraging plant can be used which have deep roots & are coppiced
but left to grow. The mate of mine suggests the likes of comfrey and
dandelion. The roots can be left to go deep whilst the top part is used as a
mulch on gardens. These are left as a permanent crop. I can get horse poop
in abundance but can see the value in such a system where nutrients are not
readily available.

rob

g'day kylie,

if something is going to go wrong we have found that happens quiet
quickly, we had issues in the early day (about a decade ago now) when
we first came back to vege' gardening and especially a more natural
organic way.

apart from fruit flies in this new area we are in (and we think we are
gatting on top with mangement) we haven't had a problem for a long
time now, how does the saying go "feed the soil - and the plants will
feed you".

i'm a bit of a scrap bandit every bit of rottable stuff ends up in te
garden beds.

On Thu, 08 May 2008 23:30:57 GMT, "0tterbot" wrote:

"len gardener" wrote in message
.. .
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/