Advice please - crop rotation

[RosieAnne]

I grew a few veg last year. I don't have much space but squeezed in a few containers. I grew green beans, courgettes and tomatoes. I still have the compost that I used in the pots and want to reuse it but I'm not sure what I can grow in the pots now.

The compost consisted of store-bought compost mixed with garden soil and manure, (plenty of manure in the courgette pots)

So, do I need to add some slow-release fertiliser to the pots and if so which is recommended?

I want to grow green beans, courgettes, tomatoes, peppers, chillis and cucumbers this year. Do I need to avoid putting any of those in certain pots, so not putting beans where I grew beans last year?

I had some mildew on the courgettes towards the end of the season. Is their compost still ok?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[ameno]

If you tomatoes got blight, don't use that compost again for tomatoes (in theory, blight spores will die in the soil over winter, but better to be safe than sorry). Otherwise, none of those crops tend to suffer much from soil-borne diseases (apart from cucumbers, but you didn't grow those last year), so you don't need to worry much about rotation, at least not yet. Maybe in another year or two.
The mildew on the courgettes is nothing to worry about. That isn't soil-borne, so the spores will not have survived the winter in the soil.

As for the compost itself, you should fluff it up and add a general fertiliser (like growmore, chicken manure, or blood, fish and bone), as well as some slow-release fertiliser, when you come to plant.

[solway cropper]

I've been container growing for 12/13 years now and usually aim to get two crops per tub per year. After the early potatoes I follow with either french beans, turnips or salad crops. The compost is refreshed with BFB. At the end of the year I recycle most of my potting mix by adding it to the compost bins and mixing with kitchen and garden waste and occasional seaweed and animal manure. This gives me a nice workable material the following year. So far I've not had any problems with disease build up but I do grow a variety of crops so it's not the same compost for the same veg each year. The only problem I've found is that I have to keep buying more compost bins!

[RosieAnne]

If you tomatoes got blight, don't use that compost again for tomatoes (in theory, blight spores will die in the soil over winter, but better to be safe than sorry). Otherwise, none of those crops tend to suffer much from soil-borne diseases (apart from cucumbers, but you didn't grow those last year), so you don't need to worry much about rotation, at least not yet. Maybe in another year or two.
The mildew on the courgettes is nothing to worry about. That isn't soil-borne, so the spores will not have survived the winter in the soil.

As for the compost itself, you should fluff it up and add a general fertiliser (like growmore, chicken manure, or blood, fish and bone), as well as some slow-release fertiliser, when you come to plant.

Thank you, that's really helpful. Can I ask if there's a particular slow-release fertiliser you'd recommend?

[ameno]

The Miracle-Gro and Chempak ones are Which best buys, so one of those (the Miracle-Gro one is cheaper).

[RosieAnne]

The Miracle-Gro and Chempak ones are Which best buys, so one of those (the Miracle-Gro one is cheaper).

Thank you