Winter onion sets and crop rotation

[Vince G]

My 6 bed rotation order is thus: Potatoes follow Umbellifers follow Alliums follow Miscellaneous follow Brassicas follow Legumes.

So my onions will go where the miscellanoues stuff has been, i.e. sweetcorn (which has finished) squash (which will soon be cut for storage), courgettes and chard, which will both perish in the first frosts. So by end of October-ish, the bed will be ready for onion and garlic.

[zazen999]

My chard doesn't perish in the first frosts...it's the mainstay of our winter growing.

[Kirk]

The folly of not practicing crop rotation was demonstrated in the United States where grain crops were grown year on year on year on year and the end result was the soil structure was eroded to such an extent that the soil simply blew away in the wind.

It's nonsense to say the introduction of granular fertilisers has reduced the need for rotation.

My garden and veg plot is not the size of the US grain lands. A raised bed with the same thing in for 10 years is not going to blow away and an annual bag or manure from the garden centre takes pretty good care of it.

Look at the fact that to harvest the grain they will use a dozen huge harvesters side by side, you couldn't fit half on one of them in my garen and the wheel of one is bigger then the growing area I have.

Main point was crop rotation is not in my view applicable to a garden plot/plots or set of raised beds. On a garden plot a handful of fertiliser will do a lot for it. In the US grain lands totally useless.

You cannot say that what is adopted on the US grain lands has to be followed on a UK garden veg plot.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Fine, you just go ahead and plant the same crop in the same piece of ground year after year and give your handful of fertiliser and see where it gets you eventually. We'll be waiting for the conclusion

[Littlefox2000]

To be honest, this is my first year of allotmenting...but I will definitely be following a crop rotation. I just think its safest for ensuring you don't deplete the same nutrients in a bed and avoid disease. Onions can still be planted out for a reasonable number of weeks for me to allow other crops to die back.

Other people might be lucky, but I'd rather rotate to be on the safer side and give my crops the best chance I can. Just my thoughts...

LF


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