An easy to manage crop rotation plan can be based on a four year cycle which will be sufficient to prevent the build up of problems. Your first action to create a crop rotation plan should be to create a list of the vegetables which you want to grow on your land.

This is essential because although we do not normally grow tomatoes on our plot (we grow our tomatoes in grow bags), you may want to grow lots of them. On the other hand, we like lots of onions and garlic which may not suit you. Every gardener is different as far as the crops they prefer is concerned.

We provide a useful, automated tool to generate a four year crop rotation plan for you, it’s free and can be found here.

Before you go there however, a word or two about how it works. On the first page you click the vegetables which you want to grow and then click the box to confirm your selection. This will take you to a page which does two key things. First it generates a personalised calendar for those vegetables and at the bottom of the page it will generate a four year crop rotation plan – that’s the bit you are interested in.

You will notice that the rotation plan has four plots plus another one entitled “anywhere / permanent”. You need to stick to grouping your vegetables as defined in plots 1 to 4 but the ones under the “anywhere / permanent” group can be planted in any of the four plots. This is useful because if you have a shortage of vegetables which fit into one plot, this can be evened out by including several of the “anywhere / permanent” group in the plot.

So, with the help of our crop rotation tool you will now have a very good idea of where to plant your vegetables this year, we’ll call that year 1 for convenience. In year 2 though, you need to rotate the crops so that they are grown in different plots. There are good methods and bad methods for doing that, a well accepted method to rotate your crops is shown in the picture below.

Vegetables which can be planted anywhere in the rotation plan are sweetcorn, lettuce, courgettes, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, radish and rhubarb although it does pay to move around each year. If the above rotation plan is unbalanced because of the range of the vegetables you want to grow, French Beans and Runner Beans can also be swapped to other groups without any ill effects.

Runner Beans are included in the above crop rotation plan however our personal experience (and from the experiences of others) is that they can be grown in the same place year after year without any ill effects. Many gardeners have permanent supports for runner beans and this works fine.

To keep it all simple and clear we have named the individual vegetables in the picture above. Some books and websites refer to groups of vegetables rather than individual ones. The names used are legumes (peas, beans etc.), brassicas (cabbages, greens etc.), potatoes (includes tomatoes) and finally onions / roots.

SOIL ACIDITY AND pH LEVEL TESTING

Each year it is a good idea to test the pH of your soil in all four beds. pH is a measure of the acidity / alkalinity of your soil with a reading of 1 being the most acidic and 14 being the most alkaline. Most vegetable prefer a neutral pH which is about 6.5 to 7. Kits to test soil pH are available to buy online and also at garden centres and many diy stores.

If your soil is too alkaline (i.e. the pH level is too high) you need to add compost and manure to decrease the pH level.

If your soil is too acidic (i.e. the pH level is too low) you need to add lime (available at garden centres) to increase the pH level. When adding lime to soil read the pack instructions carefully to get the dosage correct.

Different vegetables have mild preferences for particular soil types as far as pH is concerned. However, unless you are expert at adjusting soil pH, simply aim for a level of 6.5 to 7. After several years of growing vegetables on an initially neutral soil, in all probability it will become slightly acidic and need a small dose of lime.

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