Planning your planting

Planting different vegetable plants in different parts of your garden or plot each year is called crop rotation. It can be beneficial for both the soil and for combatting pests and diseases. 

Benefits of crop rotation

An annual 'shift around' of your veg plot helps your growing space in many ways:

• It maintains good soil structure. Deep-rooted plants, such as carrots and parsnips, will open up the soil for more shallow-rooted plants, such as salads, the following year.
• You can use precious compost most effectively. Focus your feed on the hungry plants (brassicas) and there's no need to re-feed that area when you plant non-hungry plants (carrots) the following year.
• You'll better control weeds. Mix up your planting so larger-leaved veg can cover the soil, preventing weed seeds from germinating.
• It prevents a build-up of pests and diseases. If you keep growing the same plants in the same place year-on-year, there is a risk that diseases will build up in the soil, infecting next year's crop. Move them around the plot so that their specific diseases, such as blight or club root, have time to die off.

Four-year crop rotation

You can have fun devising your own rotation, choosing the veg you enjoy eating and growing, as follows:

1. Divide your growing area into four or more sections.
2. Sort your crops into families (see below).
3. If you keep the plants in the same families together (such as potatoes and tomatoes), but move them around the different sections each year, you will have a successful crop rotation.

Or, you could try a four-year rotation. It looks a little more complicated, but that's because it includes what to grow over winter. It also tells you when to apply compost and grow green manures.

What is a vegetable family?

This is a botanical term used to describe groups of vegetable plants with similar characteristics, such as flower and fruit structures. This means you can plan how they will grow, and work out which ones will be susceptible to the same diseases or 'pests'.

• Alliums: Onion, garlic, shallot, leek.
• Brassicas: Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohl-rabi, oriental greens, radish, swede, and turnips.
• Cucurbitaceae: courgettes, marrows.
• Legumes: Peas, broad beans, French and runner beans.
• Solanaceae: Potato, tomato.
• Roots: Beetroot, carrot, celeriac, celery, Florence fennel, parsley, parsnip (N.B swedes and turnips are brassicas).