Crop Rotation

An important agricultural principle states that you should not plant the same kinds of crops on the same soil in succession.

All cultivated plants take the same nutrients from the soil. However, different types of plants use them in different proportions. Some use more nitrogen, others more potassium and others, more phosphorous.

With crop rotation, you ensure that none of the  foods that your plants require becomes depleted and that the balance between nutrients in the soil is maintained.

Rotating your crops will also keep insect and fungal pests in check.

In addition, since different types of plants need different methods of cultivating, tilling and fertilizing, moving your crops around will force you to work your soil in different ways.

This will keep your soil in a healthy alkaline condition and help to keep it free of weeds.

If you rotate your crops regularly, you will require less labor and less fertilizer to maintain your soil.

If you must provide a large variety of crops, one after another, one a small area, you will not be able to rotate them perfectly.

You will have to intercrop -grow different types of plants close to each other on the same bed of soil.

In addition, unplanned circumstances - such as poor weather or attacks by insects or birds - may force you to discard a crop and replace it with a completely different crop at short notice.

If you are selling to a market, you will have to grow your crops to suit the market's demand. As a result, you will not be able to grow different types of produce in equal proportions.

This will also prevent you from perfectly rotating your crops.

However, by cultivating the land thoroughly and deeply, and by systematically working the soil, you will still be able to produce good produce, even if you cannot follow a plan of strict crop rotation.

On the other hand, even when crops are rotated, shallow soil that is not worked well will fail in a dry season.

Nevertheless, rotating the cultivation and planting of your vegetables will improve the soil's productiveness and the health of the crops that it produces.

If you are growing crops in succession, you can gain the advantages of rotation by dividing your vegetable garden into three or four equal parts. You should then either bastard trench each part or plow itand subsoil it. Every three years, provide your garden with a heavy dressing of farmyard manure.

In the intervening years, simply plow or dig, then follow with a dressing of lime. You may cultivate with fertilizers after you add the lime.

This will keep your soil in good condition at the least expense. You will be working every part of the soil deeply at regular intervals, and maintaining the necessary supply of humus by adding farmyard manure.

Lime keeps the soil alkaline and friable, and makes the inert plant foods in the manure that were left behind by the previous crop available to the current crop.

You should add the fertilizers after you apply the lime because some of them need lime as a base before plants can use them.

Frequent light dressings of lime - in the form of ground limestone, chalk or quicklime - will improve the quality of most soils, especially clay and peaty soils.

Some soils already have enough lime, however.

You do not have to adhere rigidly to this program of manuring and fertilizing.

It is not possible to confine manure, fertilizers or lime to specific sections, and it would not be a good idea to do so.

You can add manure, fertilizer, lime or soot to any crop as needed.

Farmyard manure should be applied generously to the section of your garden that is being bastard-trenched or subsoiled.

You should apply at least 30 tons to every acre of light soil, and at least 30 tons to every acre of peaty or heavy soil.

When you plant new crops, you should place them on the sections of soil that have been treated in the ways that most satisfy their needs for growth. However, the need for you to have constant supplies to send a market will play the most important part in determining when and where you should grow different types of crops.