Using Crop Rotation in Your Garden

Farming and gardening used to be very simple pursuits, but the advances in gardening methods have made this quite a science. Due to the hard work and research of thousands of individuals, we now have gardening techniques that can greatly increase what we produce.

During the time where you start your garden, you need to arrange it in a way where you can use crop rotation. This vital practice ensures that the soil will remain perpetually healthy and rich. Without crop rotation, yields would drastically be reduced each year.

For crop rotation to be effective, you need to segment your garden. You will put different types of vegetables in each segment, and then rotate the vegetables every year.

You decide what sections to put the crops in based on what type they are. Four categories exist, the initial one being heavy feeders. They are called this because they use large amounts of nitrogen to fuel their rapid growth.

Next comes the middle ground feeders, which use less energy than heavy feeders but still need a fair amount. Smaller vegetables like tomatoes are considered to be part of this category.

Light feeders use the least nitrogen out of all the categories. If you only used light feeders and did not use crop rotation, you would probably be fine for many years. In the light feeding category, the plants are very basic and are essentially only the food, like carrots.

Crop rotation would not work if not for the last category, which is the soil building group. These unique plants leave more nitrogen in the ground than they take out. The smallest of plants constitute this class, including beans and peas.

The best arrangement is to have it ordered light to medium to heavy to soil builders. In this arrangement, each grouping gets exactly the right amount of nitrogen, and you will have an efficient garden.