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Crop Rotation For The Home Gardener
I was just reading in another group where crop rotation for the home gardener really doesn't help much in preventing plant diseases. The reasoning behind this thought is that the average home gardener simply can't move his crops far enough away from where they were planted the previous year. The article stated that you need to move your crop at least 1/4 mile away because it's likely that the soil will be diseased up to that distance. One guy in the group said he has been planting his tomatoes in the same spot year after year for many years now and can see no difference. Others in the group also confirm this and state that they get a good crop every year as long as the soil is properly fertilized each year. Seems to make sense to me. Your thoughts on rotating crops a very short distance compared to no less than a 1/4 mile from where they were grown last season Rich |
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Crop Rotation For The Home Gardener (Billy)
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Crop Rotation For The Home Gardener
In article
, Billy wrote: In article , (EVP MAN) wrote: I was just reading in another group where crop rotation for the home gardener really doesn't help much in preventing plant diseases. The reasoning behind this thought is that the average home gardener simply can't move his crops far enough away from where they were planted the previous year. The article stated that you need to move your crop at least 1/4 mile away because it's likely that the soil will be diseased up to that distance. One guy in the group said he has been planting his tomatoes in the same spot year after year for many years now and can see no difference. Others in the group also confirm this and state that they get a good crop every year as long as the soil is properly fertilized each year. Seems to make sense to me. Your thoughts on rotating crops a very short distance compared to no less than a 1/4 mile from where they were grown last season Rich It would really help, if you could identify your source of misinformation. The problem is with monocultures, where a pest can set up house and wait for its favorite substrate to be replanted. I have 2 problematic spots in my garden. In my root garden, if I plant basil next to the retaining wall, a wilt kills them. (Was probably the seeds that introduced it and no basil has been planted there in 3 years. In 2 years, I may try again.) In another bed, I have a ten foot section where beans and tomatoes get leaf curl and wither away. The other 6 feet are fine. The tomatoes 50 ft. away are fine. Plants within the same taxonomic family tend to have similar pests and pathogens. My problem is that I grow so much from the family Solanaceae (peppers, tomatoes, potatoes), which take the sunniest portions of my yard with the cucurbits getting the area that is a little less sunny, and the Swiss chard and the lettuce getting the least sunniest areas. I got away with no crop rotation for 10 years. Now I pay attention. If you can rotate your crops from one end of a raised planter to the other end, I think you will save yourself some grief. A quarter mile is more what you do to avoid cross pollination. ---- Here's the link http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/...172715742.html -EVP MAN ---- Thanks. As I mentioned, my garden makes crop rotation difficult, and I remember posting in "wrecked gardens" how I never rotated my crops, and everything was fine. To a hobbist, a bad year is acceptable, but when you begin to depend on your garden to feed you, or to grow produce commercially, a bad year is unacceptable. Then it becomes a matter of crossing all the "t"s and dotting all the "i"s in your gardening approach to productivity, in business, it's called CYA (cover your ass). The gardening bed where I'm having trouble with tomatoes (2 years in a row), I've planted potatoes, obviously not my best choice. If the problem continues, next year it will be strictly brassica with a heavy dose of mustard early in the season. I don't like this because it requires that I turn the mustard into the soil; http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2009/1...ia-growers-add -hot-mustard.html and I'm trying to do no-till gardening. The other implication is that I will have fewer beds for the Solanaceae family, so I may have to change my style of eating, or develop new beds. What it all boils down to is, yes, you can forget about crop rotation but you will assume added risk. Problems can fly in, blow in, walk in, or even ride in with the seed, and then set up house keeping in our garden beds. If your risks includes flying insects, or sporulating fungi (ergot or odium), a quarter mile may not be enough, but these aren't typically the problems that we gardeners face. Most of our problems revolve around soil pests. With soil bound pests, we can do is to make the bed as uninviting as possible. Pest wants Solanaceae, give it Brassicaceae. It may not starve to death but it won't be a happy camper and flourish either. A shovel can spread infection, so if you suspect you have a problem, spray all the dirt off your shovel and soak it in a bleach solution (1/4 c bleach to 5 gal water) for 20 min., or wipe the cleaned shovel with a bleach dipped rag. (This is another benefit of no-dig gardening.) There is no fool proof way to avoid pests but you can make your garden as uninviting as possible. http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortn...8/rotateg.html -- - Billy "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html |
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Crop Rotation For The Home Gardener (Billy)
EVP MAN wrote:
Here's the link http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/...172715742.html This is mainly referring to reducing opportunities for pests which I take to be insects, nematodes, snails etc. These are obviously fairly mobile, especially insects. It also mentions microbial issues in passing. Microbes are much less mobile and so rotation is likely to have more effect. For example if you have a soil-carried fungus like fusarium wilt attacking your eggplant don't plant other solanums (which are also susceptible to it) in the same plot for several years. The matter of nutrient depletion is not mentioned at all. The last issue can be dealt with in other ways but there are situations where it does need to be considered. For example if you have just fertilised with a nitrogenous manure (chook poo) or you have just grown a legume in the plot it is smart to plant something that needs lots of N (eg corn) instead of something that doesn't need it. If you never rotate only one bed is going to get the benefit of nitrogen fixing from legumes. You don't want to plant carrots in a bed that is very enriched because they will be the worse for it. Some rather neat permaculture systems which includes having chooks on the plot as one stage of the rotation instead of weeding and cultivating. I agree that rotation is not absolutely essential for the home gardener and doing it strictly is likely to be more constraints on your management than you need but there are advantages to be gained. I don't practice strict rotation nor do I reject it out of hand. I grow things like I live - eclectically. David |
#6
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Crop Rotation For The Home Gardener (Billy)
In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote: EVP MAN wrote: Here's the link http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/...172715742.html This is mainly referring to reducing opportunities for pests which I take to be insects, nematodes, snails etc. These are obviously fairly mobile, especially insects. It also mentions microbial issues in passing. Microbes are much less mobile and so rotation is likely to have more effect. For example if you have a soil-carried fungus like fusarium wilt attacking your eggplant don't plant other solanums (which are also susceptible to it) in the same plot for several years. The matter of nutrient depletion is not mentioned at all. The last issue can be dealt with in other ways but there are situations where it does need to be considered. For example if you have just fertilised with a nitrogenous manure (chook poo) or you have just grown a legume in the plot it is smart to plant something that needs lots of N (eg corn) instead of something that doesn't need it. If you never rotate only one bed is going to get the benefit of nitrogen fixing from legumes. You don't want to plant carrots in a bed that is very enriched because they will be the worse for it. Some rather neat permaculture systems which includes having chooks on the plot as one stage of the rotation instead of weeding and cultivating. I agree that rotation is not absolutely essential for the home gardener and doing it strictly is likely to be more constraints on your management than you need but there are advantages to be gained. I don't practice strict rotation nor do I reject it out of hand. I grow things like I live - eclectically. David That's why I recommend books like "Vegetable Gardener' Bible" by Edward C. Smith. http://www.amazon.com/Vegetable-Gard...-Gardening/dp/ 1580172121/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815454&sr=1-1 "How to Grow More Vegetables" by John Jeavons http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/...l=search-alias %3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=How+to+Grow+More+Vegetables&x=0&y=0 Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microb...l/dp/088192777 5/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815176&sr= 1-1 Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture (Paperback) by Toby Hemenway http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...culture/dp/160 3580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1 in order that other gardeners can plant eclectically, and know why they are doing it. Three years ago, I was very intimidated by the fact that each plant had its own needs. Now I have a good idea of what good soil is, and how to place my plants so that they have an optimum chance to succecced. That I have reservations can only be chalked up to a humility that tells me that I can't know everything. Everything is empiricism. -- - Billy "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html |
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