How to Rotate Crops to Improve the Soil in a Garden

By Tammy Quinn Mckillip
eHow Contributing Writer

The key to a healthy garden year after year is diversity. When the same crop is planted continually, the soil becomes depleted of nutrients that are essential to the development of healthy plants. By rotating your crops, you can ensure a healthy harvest season after season. The following steps will guide you as tend to your garden.

Instructions

  1. Step 1

    Switch your crop location at least every other year so that you are never planting the same crop in the same soil consecutively. If possible, try to rotate your crops between three to eight years.

  2. Step 2

    As long as you plant at least 10 feet from last season’s growing location, you can plant the same crop, but you should try to diversify throughout your garden so that the ground is supporting a new crop of plants at least every other year.

  3. Step 3

    Plant the same vegetable in several different locations throughout your garden, interspersing one vegetable grouping with another. That way, any garden pests that may be attracted to one type of plant will have to try harder to reach the rest of the same type of plant, and you may find that certain patches of the same plants are doing better than others within the same garden. Diseases that affect one type of plant will also have a harder time traveling to other parts of the garden where the same plants are planted.

  4. Step 4

    Mix up several varieties of the same crop throughout the garden. This should give you an idea of which types your soil supports and the best location for them.

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