Pocket planting

[Snadger]

On my last plot i rebelled against plot rotation and 'Pocket Planted' all manner of mixed veg and flowers in small pockets of up to 600mm in diameter (using metric as younger grapes get confused with imperial measurements.)
I had 1000mm wide beds set up with the original idea of using these numerous beds for a crop rotation program. I soon found that I had all mannner of nasties in the plot like clubroot, white rot, carrot fly,cabbage root fly and any other dodgy fly or fungi you could possibly imagine.

Because i didn't know what lurked in each bed I filled each bed with multiple variations of flowers,brassicas,alliums,roots and even ornamental potatoes (Can recommend Red Duke of York for foliage display.)

Eventually through what i thought was good husbandry and a holistic approach I got rid of all these nasties and plot became very productive with no digging required.

I then changed plots!

I have five large beds of a similar size and have fallen into the plot rotation trap because of it.
I dunno whether to follow the holistic approach whereby I created a hotchpotch of colourful flowers and veg (Inspired by Geoff Hamiltons Ornamental kitchen garden) or take the opportunity to seperate brassica,alliums,roots,potatoes and other produce including flowers into their own beds?

Decisions, decisions!

[veggiechicken]

No good asking me - I'm a hotchpotch with cardboard on a tangent gardener
Nature doesn't crop rotate or sow in rows and she seems to do just fine

[Snadger]

No good asking me - I'm a hotchpotch with cardboard on a tangent gardener
Nature doesn't crop rotate or sow in rows and she seems to do just fine

Another problem is, the proportions of each veg I grow,or eat, aren't equal. It would be nice to have all brassicas together, so i only need net one area though? Or do I split brassicas up and ornamentalise them by using different coloured netting over each group. It would also be a colour trial to see which colour netting was best for them.

[Bigmallly]

It sounds like Pocket SFG. Do what serves you best Snadge.

[Snadger]

It sounds like Pocket SFG. Do what serves you best Snadge.

Yep, after 6 or 7 years of being non anal about crop rotation it might be a bit hard to return to what I rebelled against in the first place.

I thought more peeps would try to talk me into using a full rotation program, but it seems a new breed of peeps have evolved who are more in touch with the holistic approach!

[burnie]

I think crop rotation (invented? by farmers) not only helps prevent pest/disease, but also different crops take different nutrients and leave different things behind. You also have to watch you don't put roots on freshly manured ground. Then there's the soil ph, which should be different for brassicas, so how do you manure, fertilise or add lime?
Regards to nature doing things differently, don't forget we are packing crops into tighter spaces and demanding greater size of crops, it's not really a like for like comparison.

[fishpond]

Follow the holistic approach, it worked for you once, why change it?
I have never been convinced, with the amount of crops individuals produce that crop rotation works--On a field with one crop, maybe ( as it is easier to spray one field with pesticide also to feed the crop with a specific fertilizer, instead of feeding the soil every year).
On an allotment or garden, never.
Scatter it all about and confuse the little b****rs.
Maybe read what Charles D has to say about crop rotation.

[Penellype]

I find there are so many restrictions on what I can do at home that crop rotation is impossible. I have to plan around the very limited amounts of sunshine and the necessity to net anything leafy against caterpillars, brassicas against root fly, carrots against carrot fly and fruit against wasps. There is no way that I could do 4 year crop rotation on my sunny areas, although I do try to avoid more than 2 years of the same thing in a row.

At my friend's I have four 3m x roughly 800mm beds (one of which is rather shadier as it is next to some shrubs) plus a square 1.2m raised bed. This will be my 4th year there. The first 2 years I tried to rotate potatoes, onions & leeks, peas & beans, brassicas and other veg (carrots, courgettes, tomatoes, celeriac & beetroot) but I soon ran into problems. Rats ate the potatoes grown in the beds, there were too many brassicas so they overflowed into another bed and I found I was needing spaces where things had not yet been harvested. I took to growing potatoes in buckets as I do at home, putting them on the bed that runs alongside the shrubbery and is also infested with horsetail. This bed also gets invaded by the most slugs and snails, but they don't seem to eat the potatoes in the buckets and the rats have left them alone too. The square raised bed has a net cover that fits nicely over it, and that is where the carrots and some of the brassicas went last year and I will do the same (the other way round) this year. I have half of a bed reserved for onions, and I'm using the supports for the peas and beans where they were last year, but everything else is being put wherever there is space at the time when I need to plant it, using smaller nets instead of netting the whole of one of the long beds (which is very hard to get at to weed). Currently there are still cabbages, parsnips, swedes, broccoli, leeks and beetroot growing in places. Whether or not this will work remains to be seen, but I don't see why not.

[Snadger]

I think crop rotation (invented? by farmers) not only helps prevent pest/disease, but also different crops take different nutrients and leave different things behind. You also have to watch you don't put roots on freshly manured ground. Then there's the soil ph, which should be different for brassicas, so how do you manure, fertilise or add lime?
Regards to nature doing things differently, don't forget we are packing crops into tighter spaces and demanding greater size of crops, it's not really a like for like comparison.

As a general rule brassicas prefer a slightly alkaline soil. But so do a lot of other vegetables! I use dolomite lime (Magnesium Limestone) which doesn't burn plants and doesn't scab yopur spuds. This can be applied to pockets of brassicas at planting time. A slightly acidic soil of roughly 6.5 will grow decent crops of anything.

It may be beneficial to add lime if the soil pH is very low thats all. Plenty of organic matter will make the soil more friable for whatever crop you are growing, in my opinion.
By mixing every thing up including flowers you confuse pests and improve pollination by attracting insects. A pond brings frogs and newts which help get rid of slugs and snails.

Farmers have big tracts of land planted with a single crop. Pests and diseases will zone in on these areas and devastate them if they don't practice crop rotation. Farmers couldn't pocket plant as it wouldn't be economically viable for harvesting etc, but we can, as we are hand harvesting as required.
The only area I will treat differntly is the carrot and parsip beds which although still pocket planted will be in short rows along which a spade has opened up the rows and sand has been added to the grooves.

Thats the plan, but the way i work, it could change before planting time.

[happyhumph]

I do plant in rows for ease of harvesting but different rows of crops are next to each other. So last year I had carrots next to dfb, then Swiss chard, then courgettes & winter squash, then runners and peas. The other bed had runners behind huazontle with squash in between, then chard, pak choi, broccoli raab, corn salad, & winter radish. I try to avoid having the same crop in the same place 2 years in a row, but beyond that things just get mixed in as & when.

Will be doing a separate brassica area this year because of cabbage white,(if it doesn't work I'm giving up on brassica! ) but planning a bit of a potager in the front with winter squash, huazontle & beans for drying mixed in with ornamental.

[mothhawk]

The four year rotation also worked well for farmers in times gone by when they only had animal manure for fertiliser. They fertilised one field in four each year, which probably took all the manure they had. Nowadays farmers can use untold amounts of artificial and/or organic fertiliser and spread it quickly and efficiently.

I don't have space to rotate crops that much, and tend to mix them up, but I feel as long as I return all the plant compost back to the ground, they will flourish. I'm not bothered about forked carrots - (I'd just like to get some to grow bigger than a pencil stub!).

After all, in the wild most of the plants we grow would drop seed close to the parent plant to grow again the next year.

[Snadger]

I do plant in rows for ease of harvesting but different rows of crops are next to each other. So last year I had carrots next to dfb, then Swiss chard, then courgettes & winter squash, then runners and peas. The other bed had runners behind huazontle with squash in between, then chard, pak choi, broccoli raab, corn salad, & winter radish. I try to avoid having the same crop in the same place 2 years in a row, but beyond that things just get mixed in as & when.

Will be doing a separate brassica area this year because of cabbage white,(if it doesn't work I'm giving up on brassica! ) but planning a bit of a potager in the front with winter squash, huazontle & beans for drying mixed in with ornamental.

Do you not net your brassicas HH?

[happyhumph]

Never seem to get round to it (I know, I know), hence the problem so really, I should say i'm having a concerted effort to give them a chance for a change should be ok if I net them as pigeons not a problem and no club root. Have never had a problem with psb though. ......