My Second Year Plan

Radish and swede,come under brassica section,i usually put lettuce where it will fit.Have grown peas and beans in same place for many years without any problems.

Thanks Scarlet, have placed them into the Brassica section.

Whilst crop rotation is good practice it is not vital unless you have had some sort of problem.

Colin

Best advice I ever had about rotation was "don't get in a spin over it".

bed 5 (spuds) is massive, much larger than your other beds: I'm wondering what your plan is for 2013 and beyond?

OK, setting myself up here to be shot down.

Annual crop rotation was devised for farmers with vast tracts of land with one type of vegetable growing at any given time.

In true crop rotation ie following a crop instantly with a different crop, the plan wouldn't be coloured brown at all,as crops would still be growing.
I strive for true crop rotation and would estimate I only have about 25% of my land with no crop on it at the mo. If I had got it right every area of land would have had a crop on it at all times.
Grow a crop, harvest a crop,add organic matter and plant another disimmilar crop straight away is the way nature works. Nature abhors a vaccum!

I will know when I've evolved into a proper veg gardener as my land will be full of crops 100% of the time!

This is how I would like to work, particularly with only half a plot at the moment, so with an eye to the future, can you tell me what you have in the ground at the moment Snadge? Also, when will each of them be out of the ground ready for the stuff that goes in in spring? How would it work if you had 100% coverage now?

Do you grow a lot in modules to give plants a head start whilst waiting for the ground?

Just the usual stuff SS. Permanent beds of Blackcurrants,redcurrants,whitecurrants,raspberries,four types of gooseberries,strawberries, apples and pears on cordons,rhubarb.
Veg include jerusalem artichokes,cardoon and various potatoes in pockets ready for lifting. Sprouts,cabbages,leeks.kale (various) being used as required
For next year there are japanese onions , broad beans, lots of garlic growing
Leeks are in trays in greenhouse ready for planting later in spring,chrysanths are in pots and will all eventually finish up in greenhouse for cutting. Two strings of onions still hanging up in greenhouse and one being used at home.
Then of course there are my feathered friends laying me lovely large fresh eggs each day.
I try and sow something every month of the year if pos and once semi established put stuff is put in plunge beds outside to harden off, save me watering and be there when i have a space to fill.
I love taking cuttings of what I have and shifting plants around frequently.
Like everyone else i have loads of failures as well but because seeds are relatively cheap and I have varied crops I can afford a few failure now and again. I usually sow and plant more than i need to allow animals to have there share!

PS Just came back from lottie and realised i had missed quite a bit of stuff from the list! How could I miss my PSB plants, loads of large mooli,lots of spring cabbage, lots of herbs and even perennial flowers like Achillea,lupins etc

I still have lots of kale, cabbages, leeks, winter lettuces, mooli, parsnips & carrots. No beds are bare: if there's no edible crop I have green manures in them

Brassica and potatoes need a lot more space than most else we grow. To make your system worthwhile, you need more legumes and a variety of other things (main crops, winter cultivars) and a none-of-these bed (corn, squashes).

Lettuce is not a brassica. And I think generally nobody bothers to rotate shirt term, small crops, salad leaves, radishes, they just tend to be grown as catch-crops amongst bigger boys.

At the moment bed 5 is 10ft by 6ft. My original plan had potatoes split over bed 5 and bed 3 , brassicas in bed 2, onions in bed 4, and roots in bed 1, but then i thought why not extend bed 5 by another 10ft, free up bed 4, and then use the 5 year crop rotation. Whilst bed 5 is much bigger than the others, it would get filled each year by each crop type so 2012 would see a bumper spud harvest, 2013 would see a massive haul of peas and beans and so on.

Do you not think this plan would work very well? How about still extending bed 5 but splitting them lengthways to form 2 beds, and then use the 3 year rotation with 2 beds each per group?

whatever works for you. It sounds OK to me

Ok Thanks