Crop rotation in Kitchen Garden
Vriksha Agro Sciences Private Limited
Value Addition for Sustainable Agriculture
Crop rotation is one of the oldest techniques used to maintain soil health, improve crop yield and reduce pest and disease problems. It involves switching the location of the plant within the garden every season. In this article, let’s learn about the basics of crop rotation and how it can be done.
Importance of Crop Rotation
Crop rotation helps to reduce damage from pests and diseases, limits the growth of vegetable diseases, and manages soil fertility. If the same plant is grown repeatedly in the exact location, the soil might become depleted of certain nutrients. To avoid that, crop rotation is followed by kitchen gardeners to maintain soil fertility over time.
Another benefit is that crop rotation helps to reduce pests and diseases in the crops. Many insects are specific to particular types of plants, and by rotating crops, gardeners can disturb the life cycle of these pests making it difficult for them to build up and cause problems. For example, if you grow tomatoes in one area of the garden one season, you may find problems with tomato hornworms the next season. It also affects soil fertility when being grown in the same place repeatedly. Doing crop rotation can reduce the risk of pests and it also even out the loss of soil nutrients and allows time for them to fill up again.
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How to plan crop rotation for your Kitchen Garden?
Based on the type of vegetables you grow, you can plan crop rotation for your kitchen garden. Vegetables in the same family should not be planted in the same place year after year. For example, if potatoes are planted in the bed for one year, crops such as eggplants, bell peppers, and tomatoes should not be planted in the same bed the following year because all these plants belong to the same family, the Solanaceae.
The following table will give you an outline of vegetable crops and the family they belong to.?
For crop rotation to be effective, do not plant crops from the same family more than once every three years. Though it can be difficult to achieve in small gardens, maintain a garden map as a reminder of where the vegetables are planted every year.
HAPPY GARDENING!