Home Vegetable Garden – Organizing Your Garden Year On Year

Humans have a tendency to be creatures of regular habit – I’m aware that I am.  So when I first started vegetable gardening, my instinct was to find a spot for my tomatoes and then plant them there year after year.  However , as I later learned, this wasn’t good for my garden.  Variety is what a garden needs – the methodical revolution of plants from different families.  There is a technical term for this : “crop rotation”. 

Crop rotation in a home vegetable garden requires planning the location of each planting to guarantee you aren’t planting a vegetable from the same family of veg in the same location in a three year cycle.  Crop rotation is a very important part of an ecological gardening strategy, helping gardeners :

* Protect against pests and illnesses

Vegetables in the same plant family are commonly at the mercy of the same pests and illnesses ; crop revolution helps protect plants by making the location less hospitable to these organisms.  By introducing a plant in a different family, the pests and diseases die off because of lack of a food source. 

* Guard against nutrient depletion

Vegetables in different families has different nutrient requirements.  By revolving plant families, you are less certain to deplete the soil of individual nutrients.  Some veggies ( like beans and peas ), basically add nitrogen to the soil.  So revolving beans and peas with veggies that require a large amount of nitrogen can be a useful plan for shielding soil fertility. 

* Improve soil structure

Healthy soil contains a large amount of organic material which is home to a number of constructive microbes.  These microbes play a very important part in maintaining good soil structure, making it simpler for veggies to grow as roots have an easier time penetrating the soil.  Crop revolution protects these microbes by helping the soil retain its organic matter. 

To achieve success with a crop rotation programme, gardeners need to keep records from year to year in order to track the positioning of each planting within the vegetable garden.  Without extensive notes, it would be difficult to manage a crop revolution programme.  For those that do not enjoy record keeping, you can use a garden planner application which handles the tracking for you and places plants in the best location considering crop rotation needs.

Examine out her website for much more information on Vegetable Gardening For Beginners, which also has lots of info on how to plant a vegetable garden.