Tuckersmom said:
Question one: Should I change the location when planting next year? I have limited space for vegetable gardening.
Hi Patti
Well, books and articles that just quote each other all suggest rotating your crops.
But a lot of people don't rotate, or don't have room to rotate much.
The best advice I've read is: if you had any visible disease or soil-dwelling insects last year, it's probably a good idea to plant those things somewhere else for a year or two. And wash your hoe and rake well.
A root infestation might not be visible AS disease, so if a crop is inexplicably less vigorous than you expected, maybe rotate that bed out.
But if you have no visible diseases that you could blame on soil, and that crop did well there last year, ... maybe try it one more year in the same spot. Just watch for signs of infections.
Some crops are pretty disease-free in some regions.
Of course that will change around as climate changes, so we have to keep our eyes open to see what's what NOW, as opposed to remembering what worked well in the past.
I had productivity go down in one bed where I grew
Brassica rapa varieties every year for several years ... but was it a soil disease accumulating, or should I just have been adding more compost every year? The soil might well be tired and also losing it's (artificially fluffed-up) structure.
Also, I put a Knockout Rose in part of that bed "because that's where the sun is". That KO Rose went bonkers and now grows over 6 feet every year, much larger than it is "supposed to grow". I suspect the rose roots are undermining that whole bed, so maybe the Bok Choy just can't compete with a rosebush.
