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Gardening

rotations

(3 Posts)
craftyone Wed 05-Feb-20 20:15:13

arghh I should have looked here this morning, or in my book. I was convinced that roots were going into bed 3 and I spent 2 hours clearing out builders stones. Luckily I did put the correct compost into 1, so I will do bed 2 whenever we get some more nice sun and calm, like today

Oopsadaisy3 Tue 04-Feb-20 15:26:48

Do you find rabbits a problem? we have a large lawn area that I thought I would use for raised beds, however, rabbits hop across the lawn and yesterday the dog shot out of the door and a muntjac deer popped back through the hedge, by the look of the amount of droppings down there it seems he is a regular visitor.
Would it be worth the bother? Or would I just be feeding the wildlife?

craftyone Mon 03-Feb-20 08:25:46

Its hard, working out the rotations to get the most from small beds. My 4 1x1 m beds from 2020

1 potatoes followed by alliums
2 roots parsley lettuce
3 summer cabbage followed by winter cabbage
4 legumes

2021
1 legumes
2 potatoes followed by alliums
3 roots parsley lettuce
4 brassicas

2022
1 brassicas
2 legumes
3 potatoes followed by alliums
4 roots parsley lettuce

2023
1 roots parsley lettuce
2 brassicas
3 legumes
4 potatoes followed by alliums

Obviously I will be planting early potatoes and alliums go in during october
I will sow phacelia green manure after the roots

The likes of beetroot, spinach, squash, chard, cucumbers etc are pretty disease resistant and I will put them in the main garden, wherever I can see a space

The important thing is roots don`t need rich soil and brassicas do need rich soil so brassicas follow legumes and I cut these off to leave the nitrogen root nodules in the soil

I will be doing a 3 bed rotation elsewhere, just 3 x 1m circular raisedbeds plus I have one large tub that needs 3 rotations on its own. Tomatoes will be in one of the round beds. Once rotations are sorted and logged then planning is easy

I don`t use manure, I use comfrey bocking 14 (only as it is infertile) which I compost with all fruit and veg compost plus composted bark and shredded paper, not magazines or newspaper. I also make comfrey water to dilute and use as eg tomato feed

Should be interesting this year, the first year on soil which still contains patches of builders rubble