Rotational beds. Tell me your ideas on dividing up plants.

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by waynemus, Jan 24, 2007.

  1. waynemus

    waynemus Junior Member

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    I currently have a four bed system which is currently undergoing development through a no-dig setup. As I have a couple of months to spare until the beds will be full, finished, and well decomposed, I thought I'd look into options for planting out my beds.

    I hope to make use of the 4 X 11m2 (roughly) beds with a rotational system. I have seen a lot of divisions, some contradicting one another. For instance some say potatoes with tomatoes, others say put them with root crops. Another problem is some say use four beds and constantly rotate, others say use three beds and leave one to fallow under green manure.

    Could people please provide me with their divisions they use, or think would work? What labels are best? Brassicas, Roots, Tomatoes, etc? Should I go for all four in or three with fallow? Any help would be great, and if your able to provide an explanation as why "x" over "y" method it would be much appreciated and very helpful.
     
  2. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    Waynemus,

    Rotational beds is a buzzword amongst permies and organic gardeners and long been the big issue behind monoculture. You cannot expect to produce long crops of say wheat in the same place without necessarily depleting the soils.

    For the home gardener permie it means different things. If you grow a crop too long on one patch it depletes the soil and increases the environment which may underground and above ground attacks by a particular plant pest.

    In this I ask your indulgence for a moment. Organic gardeners often improve soils by using massive amendments, for instance ,blood and bone meal. This will make available massive amounts of the basic NPK that plants need, some plants like corn do wonderfully from this type of treatment but it will NOT do your carrots any good.

    If you garden to permaculture principles two things will happen. Your soil improvement will be long lasting and there probably wont be 'huge amounts' of artificially available NPK readily available NPK for the 'next' crop.

    Crop rotation is fine and I am certainly not saying if you grow tomatoes endlessly in the same spot you wont create problems but we permies tend to move annual crops around anyway as part of our long term plan. Imagine if we had to dig up our trees and shift them annually 'just cos there might be a problem'.

    Crop rotation is intrinsic, smart and great for plants but I wouldnt focus on that early on in your gardening experience, just keep a 'weather ear' to the concept and dont dwell on it too much.

    I am trying to deal with this issue gently. There are places on earth that have grown trees for thousands of years and also places that have grown grass for 000s of years and we still go back to those places for root and seedstock.

    The point is that if you are going to work your soil to the max then part of that will include crop rotation as a cycle, it is simply a strategy to improve your production. The thing we are dealing with here is folk adapting the problems of mono-culture into a backyard situation. My point is that it is not really of concern in a home garden environment unless you insist on growing the same plant time after time in the same place.

    I hate this, having said that, if you load up a bed to produce sweetcorn which is a gross topsoil feeder you can 'best' use that bed by following it up with 'cabbages' etc which will indulge themselves [supposedly] on what was missed by the corn. You could do the same thing with carrots or even chrysanthemums - neither of them like too much nitrogen in a bed.

    Waynemus, know that these things are out there but sometimes the best laid concepts may not really affect you in your particular environment.

    Cover crops always make sense to me just cos they are more fun and more useful than waiting for the weeds to take over.

    hope this makes some sense.

    floot
     
  3. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    You often hear tactics described that go: nitrogen fixing crop or green manure, followed by heavy feeder like corn or brassica, followed by fruiting annual like tomato, eggplant or capsicum, followed by a root crop... I've done it actually, but in theory it sounds pretty good!
    Of course, if you are planting all those things in the same bed full of well composted, well mulched, biologically active soil, in theory the plants will be able to take what they need. Carrots are supposed to be good companions to tomatoes for instance... At the moment our garden is overun by pumpkins and we can hardly tell the beds from the paths, which is fine. We know vaguley how to get to the basil for pesto, probably find a basket of edible things on the way... :lol: So we're at the rampant disarray end of our rotational cycle. :shock:
     
  4. beherit

    beherit Junior Member

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    Jodi & I are in full praise of the rotational system!

    Jodi - because she has short arms & four narrower beds allow her full access :lol:

    me - because i must have order!

    But anyway, we found the "Patch from Scratch" video (avail. from ABC) a great resource for setting up beds, it outlines all the principles of a rotational system without a technical overload, just enough information to give any amateur gardener the confidence to have a go.
     
  5. waynemus

    waynemus Junior Member

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    Thank you all for your replies. They're certainly helpful. Reading the GA factsheet on it, you use a series of plants in a series to have the previous plant to serve the present plants needs.

    I really want to find out about what everyone puts their vegetables in.

    Where do you put corn, beans, peas, tomatoes, etc? If you divide it up how do you ensure that your get a proportionate crop to what you eat? (i.e. I don't think I'd eat a whole 11m2 worth of peas, beans, and broad beans just for the satisfaction of planting a bed under legumes).

    What are the three or four labels you suggest I use to divide up the plants? (i.e. Root, Brassicas/Leafy, Soft plants (tomatoes, etc), Legumes/Green Manure, etc) If people could provide a definition for each group they suggest, and how to recognise the particular plants of this group it would be great.

    Any more help on this matter would be welcome.
     
  6. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    If you actually crop your legumes you are harvesting most of the nitrogen they've fixed in the form of protein. In a green manure the idea is to cut the legumes and mulch or till them in just before the plants flower as this will be when they are highest in N and probably a bunch of other elements.
     
  7. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    I like the fruit - root - leaf - legume - green manure rotation personally...so that's 5 beds if you're devoting a whole bed to each...arguably you could cut out the green manure if you're chopping and dropping in the legume phase, but IMO, green manure's the phase which adds enough necessary organic matter ready to start the cycle again.

    I mix up parts of my beds between all the rotations as we have a year round growing season...quite a few plants which are annuals in southern climes grow for much longer or become perennials up here, so it's not like you ever have things finishing their cycles at the same time. Then you have much longer term crops than average...6+ months etc. But I replace each planting space within a bed after final harvest with the next phase of the above cycle. I also have quite a few perennials in the beds for beneficial companion plants and as deterrent/trap crops.

    If you get too many legumes, just store them...dried, frozen etc...you don't necessarily have to eat them fresh. Same with all parts of the cycle except the green manure...there's always a way to store things so you have something from the garden during times when plants are not at harvest stage.
     
  8. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    I rotate areas to put heavy feeders in after light feeders that are not in the same family because they could be vulnerable to the same soil diseases.

    So tomatoes can go where lettuce goes, but eggplants, potatoes and peppers should not go where tomatoes go, even for 3-4 years (nightshade family.) Although nightshades can go together. This is the biggest group to keep track of, they have the most problems unless you use resistant hybrids. It's hard to have enough beds to either keep these altogether, or not let them be in a nightshade bed for 3-4 years.

    Brassicas tend to grow in the winter, so that's a good tradeoff with the summer nightshades.

    Corn is the biggest nutrient hog of all, so I usually put in lettuce, peas and beans with and after the corn.

    But I love no-till because there is so much compost and mulch, there's lots of nutrients for all, no matter where you plant stuff, and good protection against soil problems.

    I've actually found companion planting to be better, like flowers in among the veggies to bring in beneficials. I grow a low-growing clover in among the veggies all the time, so I always have green manure going.

    It's hard to not plant one bed, but it is a good idea, let the little critters go wild!

    And even after all the planning this takes to make enough beds to have this work, I've had to put some things out of order, and they have been fine. :)
     
  9. Paul Cereghino

    Paul Cereghino Junior Member

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    Lots of ideas... enough to keep you busy planning for weeks and not planting a thing :)

    The importance of rotating for nutrient availability is related to how much nutrients you are importing. If you are doing the organic NPK addition thing you can crop the same site for a long time. If you are not importing N than a legume phase (or two!) might be critical.

    I get most excited about snazzy timing. Like planting early spring greens, and harvesting in patches in time to put in your tomatoes, and finishing off the greens in time for the tomatoes to sprawl, then chopping in the tomatoes just in time to put in winter rye.

    Or Planting early peas that sputter out in time for over wintering kale, and undersowing clover before it gets cold so you have something growint as the kale gets eaten down over winter, and chopping it in in time for next springs crops.

    Then there is the corn/beans/pumpkin polyculture thing. Or growing peas with a thin crop of favas that the peas use as a trellis... (never done the latter, just read about it and it sounds interesting.)

    ~Paul
     
  10. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    I suppose in many respects I have never had to do the rotation thing.

    Mostly, because I dont think I have maximised the beds production anyway and most of all I used chooks after each 6 monthly crop.

    To be honest, I cannot remember being plagued with anything or having to do anything more than add compost etc.

    Dont get me wrong, I am not anti-crop rotation but I would hate to see new growers jumping hoops over this issue when you may not have to.

    I should say, that if what we are doing is feeding our family then crop rotation is a valid strategy but to my mind it is so irrelevant for the new grower as to be nearly over the horizon. For instance, if you grow a summer crop of tomatoes, it is near impossible to plant a subsequent crop AND the same goes for most homegrown vegies.

    Even then, it may take you YEARS to develop 'resistance' or 'pests' in a crop like tomatoes. I say this because as permacultures our 'best' crops are in front of us as we build soil etc. Well, pretty much the same happens for other crops, even then, if your tomatoes are beset by nematodes dont think that a 6' 'shift' in bed will cure anything. The pests will get there. It is important to address the pests.

    floot
     
  11. Plumtree

    Plumtree Junior Member

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    I don't mean to highjack this thread but I feel my comments are relevent in that some of the responses do present other stategies.

    I am on a small farm but this concept does apply to suburban gardens. As a youngster the 'vegie patch' was always in the same place and all the vegies grew in exactly the same location. The tomatoes, big fat beefsteaks and oval Borghese for cooking, always in the sunny corner. Corn was always down the end so that when they grew to around 2m the did not block the sun.

    Being on a farm there was always 'heaps' of things to import. Sheep manure, duck and chook manure combined with straw and kitchen refuse.
    A lot of the kitchen refuse went through the chooks and things before getting to the garden but there is a need for a compost heap for prunings, cuttings and heavier stuff. Wine and cider making produced a lot of material for composting.

    Oddly enough there was no real order despite the routine! Self seeding was rampant because of this recycling... tomatoes sprang up everywhere and seldom removed, pumpkins sprouted where it wanted to, Basil was a weed but never weeded and comfrey and kale was just chucked in the compost heap. I have never understood how but you could always find potatoes between the shed and the garage??

    I am trying to follow this 'traditional' view because it worked then and should do so now. In fact, in the traditional sense it is very organic and, from my understanding, is very much in the permaculture mould. It will take years for my patch to be as productive as the one in my memory but, so far, it is surprisingly productive (and in a severe drought!)
     
  12. FREE Permaculture

    FREE Permaculture Junior Member

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    wtg plumtree, just what i wanted to say :)

    rotating beds is a bit of a furfy, i think it's much better to just grow everything in amongst everything, if a cucumber pops up, that's were it stays, then work around it, put in a few stakes and grow beans above it ect. crop rotation is for farmers with huge land were they don't do much to the soil, but for an average vege plot, adding compost and shit is plenty, just take a soil sample from a productive farm and compare it to your soil, big difference.

    it's like everything, fanatics are always looking for a band wagon, they take an idea from a grand scale and they then go about making a set of 5 or so little raised beds, plant there vege's, take pictures and write a book showing how well there vege's are doing using the crop rotation method :)

    the guy next door builds 5 beds, plants vege's and herbs, takes pictures, writes a book on how well his vege's are doing using the companion planting method, the other furfy.

    the other guy next door builds 5 raised beds and just grows tomatoes, nothing to rotate and not a herb in site, just good soil preparation, he's tomatoes are the best, but he doesn't write a book 'cos not many would buy it if it just said, don't bother with all that rubbish, just grow what you like where you want it.
     
  13. waynemus

    waynemus Junior Member

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    Obviouslly there is a great deal of variety of opinion when it comes to rotational planting. I still want to have a go at it though. I want to give my plants the best chance possible, without putting the extra burden of digging in this, that and the other, because hopefully the plants will do most of the work.

    I certainly am going to give the three sisters corn/bean/pumpkin mound a shot. A good method for this I found here: https://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

    Another thing I thought of doing was constructing lattice supports around two sides of each of the four beds. This will allow me to grow a variety of climbing plants and not unneccessarily intruding with stakes in the middle of the beds.

    The fruit bed I was going to grow tomatoes and egg plants up the lattice, corn/beans/pumpkins in Three Sisters mounds, and zucchini, capsicum and chillis interspersed throughout.

    The root bed I was going to grow potatoes, beetroots, carrots, parsnips, etc planted in the ground in the centre of the bed. I was going to use the lattice to grow beans/peas/broad beans etc.

    The leafy bed I was going to grow all the suitable vegetables in the centre, and the same for the lattices as the root bed.

    The final bed I am not sure what I'm doing yet. Maybe I will fallow with green manure, or even might let it be the spill over bed for the really popular vegetables amongst our family.'

    Not sure what effect having the beans, etc, growing up the lattice will have. Will keep you posted. Can anyone speak from experience in this matter?

    As my parents want me to curb my spending on the garden, I am only going to have two beds opertational for the winter season. Hopefully the other two will be ready for the summer crops.

    Thanks all for your advice.

    Wayne
     
  14. Plumtree

    Plumtree Junior Member

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    A sibling offered these reminders:
    Tomato seeds or seedlings were never planted they just came up year after year.
    Comfrey always put in with the corn, don't know the reason just done. Never plant corn in rows but always in a bunch?
    Apparently poultry straw was thrown over the potato patch and somehow the potatoes just continued to grow.
     
  15. waynemus

    waynemus Junior Member

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    What is poultry straw? Chicken manure and straw? Pea Straw?
     
  16. Plumtree

    Plumtree Junior Member

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    Poultry straw is spent bedding material from the poultry shed and duck shed. Clean straw was added to the sheds and the old soiled straw used in compost, directly to the garden or sometimes added to 'poato patch'.

    Please tell us how your project goes because it sounds very interesting. The corn, beans and squash concept sounds very much like the method used in my childhood vegie patch. Most everything was allowed to grow and the plants seemed to benefit from the congestion and thrived as a result.
     
  17. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    You know, I think all the way back through history farmers discovered they got better yields by leaving one part of their land fallow, which created the concept of crop rotation. You had to move stuff somewhere else while you left that section fallow, which is probably the most important part of building your soil up, since it is such a slow process. Plants can suck out the nutrients in a season, but organically, to put it back and get the critters multiplying and improving the soil, takes more than a season. It takes at least a year.

    Everyone is in such a rush to till in mulch and compost, make compost faster than ever before, and the issue still is, you can't make the living soil bacteria eat, reproduce and poop any faster.


    here's a little interesting tidbit regarding the origins of crop rotation:

    https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi26.htm

    Ninth-century farmers used two fields -- one active at a given time, and the other one idle (or fallow). This kept them from robbing the soil of nutrients and leaving it unproductive. Then someone found that a field could be used two years out of three if it were planted with one crop in the fall and a different crop in the spring, a year and a half later.

    This meant farmers had to break their holdings into three fields -- one to be planted with wheat or rye in the fall, for human consumption; a second to be used in the spring to raise peas, beans, and lentils for human use and oats and barley for the horses. The third field lay fallow. Each year this use was rotated among the three fields. We remember the spring planting in the nursery rhyme:

    Do you, do I, does anyone know,
    How oats, peas, beans, and barley grow?
    -----------------
     
  18. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Plumtree, have you heard of seed balls? You might like them. Fukuoka made them, and the idea is to put several kinds of seeds into a ball of rich clay soil, and distribute them willy-nilly before it rains, and the plants grow up in a forest-like arrangement, apparently creating an environment where not much of an adverse pest or soil problem can get a foothold, because there's such distance between like plants.

    Here's some info:

    https://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathprojec ... alls.shtml
     
  19. Plumtree

    Plumtree Junior Member

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    Thanks for the link and tip about seedballs, Sweetpea! I thought the link very interesting and browsed through it. Many thanks!
     
  20. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    If you do a search on this forum for Fukuoka you'll find a few more links for seedballs Plumtree. I think apart from the technique of actual seedball making, the only important thing to keep in mind before getting started is the concept of beneficial guilds of seeds for each set of seedballs. There's a quote somewhere in Fukuoka's work (or one of his later followers) about seedballs being an extremely powerful technique, but one whose outcome is reliant on the wisdom of what seeds are combined together in each set of seedballs.

    I look at crop rotation as a means to help build up and maintain good soil and lessen the opportunity for pest/disease buildups while you're doing so. Adding regular manure, compost and straw over a sustained period is a great way to build healthy soil, IMO, rotation just adds to this process and helps multiply micro-organisms.

    If you've got/built healthy soil and have an endless supply of good organic material, then your chances of pest and disease problems are significantly lessened whether you rotate or not (for example, you can't rotate perennials but they survive fine), but bear in mind, rotation beds are generally designed for continuous year-round production. I'm only guessing, but I assume your example of the vegie patch from your childhood was essentially a warm season production garden with some relatively fallow period (after the warm season where many regular crops grew in fixed places) which helped break disease cycles and pest buildups?

    A rotation bed system is an attempt to aid in prevention of these things, without any need for a fallow period to break cycles and buildups, while aiding the creation and maintenance of good soil.
     

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