Rotation makes me spin

[lazzaw]

I am relatively new (2nd year) to veggie growing and, like a good boy, bought the RHS vegetable gardening book. Having avidly read it, I decided to rotate my crops (root vegs, legumes and brassicas) but I have noticed that I like the root crops much more than the other two. In addition, my better half has a deep belief that no meal is complete without potatoes in it.

As a result, half of my space is devoted to root veg and half of that is taken up with potatoes. If I carry on like this this, the 'correct' rotation will stop working.

Do I need to keep to the 3 year rotation, or could I count potatoes as a fouth type? How important is crop rotation anyway - am I getting hung up on something that is not life or death or is it worth paying attention to? I do have more land that I can use if necessary although it is currently inpenetrable due to brambles, broken glass and other debris.

[chickenkeeper]

I only have a small garden and yet wanted to grow potatoes, and couldn't afford the space they needed, so have grown the potatoes in rubble sacks, I have 8 sacks on the patio, not very pretty,well, until they flowered and they have lovely lilac flowers on them, any way, they look really healthy were dead easy to do , 2 seed pots in each sack and keep toppping up with compost and soil every time they sprouted through until the top of the sack was reached, only thing is , I don't know about the potatoes yet! haven't tried to open the sacks to see yet , waiting til the flowers have gone, but in principle it seems a good idea, no need for rotation and all that digging.Worth thinking about!

[leona]

its purely to help prevent problems with the plants ie club root so its a risk you take if you dont rotate. im only in my second year and am using the area that im using for the first time this year. i have beans at one end, potatos at the other and salads etc in the middle. il just swap sides next year

[Birdie Wife]

I would treat your tatties like a forth crop, because they need different conditions than the others. Carrots grow best in poor soil that hasn't been recently fertilised, whereas tatties like all the muck you can throw at them. Legumes such as peas draw up nitrogen from deeper in the soil, so brassicas are good to grow after them. A rotation of tatties, legumes, brassicas and finally carrots/other roots would be great, manure the soil really well then put your tatties in, and the rest will follow without needing much else.

Hope this helps.

[nick the grief]

one of the guys on our site only grew tatties & he had no toubles from disease, he did get reduced yeilds though.

Ideally you would do a three or four year rotation, but sometimes it just isn't possible & you have to work with what you've got. Just give them as long a gap as you can & you should be OK. After all Some people (Geordie ofr one ) grow their Onions in the same bed for years.