Raised Bed Crop Rotation Made Simple (2024)

FAQs

What is the best crop rotation for raised beds? ›

Crop rotation is practical for small gardens and raised beds

The most space-efficient crops are tomato, pepper, cucumber, pole bean, and cut-and-come-again greens. Bush varieties of vine crops as well as short-season crops that produce multiple harvests are good choices.

One approach to crop rotation is to divide your plants into these four basic groups: legumes, root crops, fruit crops, and leaf crops. Imagine your garden separated into four areas, as shown in the chart at the top of the page. Each successive year, you would move each group one spot clockwise.

Rotate Vegetables by Plant Family

Vegetable crops in the same botanical family are often susceptible to the same diseases and insects. For crop rotation to be most effective, gardeners should not plant vegetables belonging to the same plant family in the same location for 3 to 4 years (or 5+ years, if possible).

Good vegetables to rotate in after tomatoes include beans and peas because they naturally fortify soils with nitrogen, and greens, because they are not too demanding. I encourage you to read my article about vegetable rotation titled Spring to Fall Vegetable Rotation: Planting for Non-stop Garden Produce.

The sequence of four crops (wheat, turnips, barley and clover), included a fodder crop and a grazing crop, allowing livestock to be bred year-round. The four-field crop rotation became a key development in the British Agricultural Revolution.

Planting the Three Sisters in the order of corn, beans, and squash will ensure that they will grow and mature together and will not grow at the expense of another Sister. Sister Corn should be planted first so that it can grow tall above the other crops.

For example, say a farmer has planted a field of corn. When the corn harvest is finished, he might plant beans, since corn consumes a lot of nitrogen and beans return nitrogen to the soil. A simple rotation might involve two or three crops, and complex rotations might incorporate a dozen or more.

For crop rotation to be effective, do not plant a family in the same area more than once every three to four years. To help with planning, keep a garden log or map as a record of where your vegetables are planted each year. Look to alternate between heavy feeders and light feeders.

Tall crops will shade lower crops behind them if both are planted in the same bed. Tall crops will shade lower crops in nearby beds if they are planted on an east-west orientation and if the beds are close together. If possible, lay out beds in a north-south direction.

Most folks agree that planting north-south is marginally better, with the rationale running as follows: When rows run east-west, a tall crop in a south row can easily shade out a shorter crop in the next row north.