Grow Your Own Magazine

I've gone for the raised bed route for growing my vegetables and I'm slowly but surely adding to their numbers, meaning I started out with one in which I planted a variety of veggies, carrots, onions, beetroot etc.

As a beginner, I'm obviously taking advice wherever I can get it, books and the likes of this forum, so what I wanted to know is, because I keep reading about the importance of rotating the different types of crops year after year in order to avoid disease, what if each bed contains the same mixture and you plant out each bed at intervals to provide a constant supply through the harvesting season? Granted, once I get enough beds going, I will use each one for as few varieties as possible and plant the rows in intervals, but was curious about the mixed planting idea that would prevent any rotation.

Like most things, it's a numbers game. If you have lots of diseases like blight or pests like blackfly, carrotfly etc going about, then the more often you sow in the same place the more likely you are to have problems; not least because with each successional planting, the soil has that much less nutrients to help the young plants fend off attackers of any sort. But at the end of the day, the reason people traditionally rotate their crops once a year is that it is convenient for them.
In my raised beds, largely due to cat problems, I have been growing more than one type of crop (rotation cycle-wise) at the same time in a single bed, and what I do there is get paranoid about always feeding the soil every time I take some veggies out. At the end of the year though, my problem is remembering which bits had what where, and of course I have to worry about diseases/pests hopping over to the neighbours....hence, it is easier to keep one bed for each separate part of the cycle.
Next year, I will have a LOT more prickly gorse cuttings to keep the felines from parking their furry butts on my newly hoed soil !

Don't worry to much Gary66, it always takes a while for things to settle down when starting anew. A couple of years down the line you won't even be thinking about it, it'll come natural. So in my opinion, just sow them seeds and enjoy the produce as best as you can, until you have all your raised beds built. Good luck

HI,

I have read this thread with great interest, I have a 17 foot by 4 foot raised bed in my back garden and a patch of 4 foot by 3 foot at the end of that I have used the small space for my potatoes this year as it is ideal place for them. In the main raised bed I have been sowing anything really in a square foot gardening type stylie, as I have been planting anything next to everything, I was wandering is it essential that I roatate my vegies and potatoes? any advice would be most welcome.

Today I have harvested some salad leaves some baby beetroot leaves and some baby pak choi leaves for me sarnies so can't wait for lunch.

Thank you in anticipation.

Hi greenfingers007. I would certainly rotate your spuds and not grow them in the 4'x3' bed every year. The rest is easy, just don't grow them in the same spot in the large bed. Chop it into 3 (not literally) and just rotate in that formation. eg Carrots in the first 1/3. Then next year, put them in the second 1/3 and so on. Without getting to technical, that would work well enough so you don't get a build up of bugs etc.

cheers vegnut,

will give it a go and see what happens

Im abit confused by the rotation thing two lol

I am growing Potatos carrots and parsnips in 3 seperate sides of the garden. Can i rotate these next year or are the parsnips and carrots too similar?

The only crops that you need to really worry about under normal growing conditions are Potatoes and Brassicas. Pretty much anything else can be grown in the same place every year. My neighbour had been growing spuds in the same rows for years apparently, and they always get a good crop.

If you do get for instance, carrot fly - then I would avoid growing them in the same position next year, in case there are left over bugs in the soil. But no carrot fly means you don't have to move them if you don't want to.

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