Crop rotation is primarily a commercial grower issue rather than a home gardener issue and for home gardeners who use raised beds it is even less of an issue than those who garden in-ground. Obviously when one has the space to easily rotate crops, great. But the vast majority of small home gardeners simply cannot do it and successfully grow in the same locations for many years. The way to eliminate the need for it is good soil maintenance and that is easy to do with raised beds by simply incorporating good amounts of fresh quality compost and other organic matter annually or twice a year. When you take into consideration that the majority of the common garden diseases are not soil-borne but air borne fungus.then the need for complex crop rotation is lowered even more. For example, if we have one bed with all tomatoes/peppers, and another with beans/peas, we can really only rotate between the two. Is this sufficient? What if we end up with more than one bed of tomatoes/peppers? First beans and peas have different seasons so one example would be peas can be followed by peppers or tomatoes. East-West beds will always give you better sun exposure than north south UNLESS you have trees or buildings in the way. And another easy to do solution is to simply avoid planting all of one crop in the same bed. For example, nothing says all the tomatoes have to be in one bed rather than 1 row in each and while beans won't like all the nutrients that tomatoes need, neither do peppers. So a better understanding of the individual crop needs can allow for a better distribution of the crops than you have pictured above. Dave

It’s that time again. I’m starting to figure out what I’m planting this spring and I was glad to have this thread to go back to. I also thought I would update on what happened with my planting plans last year in case someone else is considering planting late, etc. Dave, you were concerned about how late I was planting some of what should have been spring crops and especially if it was too late for peas. I did not end up planting peas at all last year. I went right into cucumbers and string beans and they did very well. Had the best year ever with cucumbers. I did plant lettuces, all my herbs, cabbage, broccoli, bok choy. I think I got lucky with the weather. We harvested Romaine lettuce for a long time before they bolted. I grew ‘Jerricho’ which was known to tolerate heat and it sure did. We harvested Bok Choy for a long time and Kale all season. I tried a new cabbage last year, ‘Gonzales’ which produces individual cabbages and they were a big hit. Each cabbage made a large bowl of cole slaw with no leftover cabbage. Very convenient and they took up about 10 inches of growing space each. The broccoli, did have a difficult time forming a head. It wasn’t until we had a cool spell at some point during the later part of the summer before they did. I had left them in place all season and finally harvested some in August and minimum side shoots into the fall. So, I’m trying to decide whether to grow broccoli this year. To get one head of broccoli from each large plant, doesn’t make sense in my small space if I have to leave them in place all season. I didn’t plant spinach until the fall and then it did nothing. They germinated and grew a few leaves and then just sat there, so I covered them and left them to overwinter and I’m hoping they may regrow this spring. I’m pretty sure the different angle of the sun in the fall is a problem for me and I’m thinking that a Fall crop is not going to work for me at all. It was okay though because I had tomatoes still ripening up to frost and cukes still coming in, squashes still ripening. I've decided that spring crops followed by successions of summer crops are my best bet. Which allows me to cover crop for the spring if I want and do a good job of putting the garden to bed. After thinking and thinking about the Asparagus, we decided we didn’t even want to grow it. lol So, we gave them to our neighbor to grow and that solved that problem. I sometimes have a lot of enthusiasm for trying to grow something over the winter, but this winter has convinced me, that is just not the best fit for me. Especially with the ton of snow we are having this year. And I enjoy the break from the garden in the winter. So, you were correct that plans change from year to year and my plans made last spring are definitely being adjusted. Rodney, I also took your advice and took the chives out of my vegetable beds due to the fact they are perennial. I moved them into a perennial border that skirts the vegetable garden and very happy with that arrangement so far. I also managed to divide them and had a number of them to add to the border. We did manage to plant some garlic last fall too. Since we had so much trouble with the soil in the new beds, which I believe was due to being sifted before delivery, we did a lot of work on the beds in the fall. Compost ingredients worked into the beds. The tomato bed had a cover crop turned in and a heavy layer of mulch. I’m hoping this season will be an improvement. Ajsmama, Our Cilantro did some reseeding but sprouted in the fall, so not so sure that will overwinter. I really enjoyed the Cilantro last year and it was so pretty in the garden. We did manage to do one succession planting of Cilantro and that really worked out and extended our harvest. I was able to leave the first planting in the ground until fall and harvested a good amount of seed. So, that’s the update and I’ll probably be posting this year’s plan with more questions soon. Thank you all again for all the great help!

emmie9999, try corn if you want to and have some extra room (particularly if you expand your beds). I live in the country in PA, with lots of corn around. There's a farmstand a half-mile up the road that always has great corn, but I still grow some of my own, just becauase it feels good to look out and see a little patch of corn in my garden. (But I've got a pretty big garden, so I'm not so worried about the space.) This year I'm increasing the fun factor by experimenting with a couple of open-pollinated heirloom varieties along with a regular supersweet hybrid type. You can plant a small patch of corn, but then it helps to hand-pollinate it to get good ears. When the silks show up, cut off some bits of the tassles from the top and dust it over the silks. CAVEAT: I haven't tried that yet, but I read somewhere here that it works well. I'm going to try it this year. Last year I had one very small patch of late summer corn that didn't pollinate well -- I didn't know about hand-pollinating then. A lot of my gardening is just aimed at getting fresh veggies, but a lot of it is also just for fun. I grow some dried beans, for instance. From the perspective of food, it doesn't make any sense, since you can buy a pound of dried beans in the market for about 80 cents. But I grow old heirloom varieties, like Steuben and Amish Knuttle, which you can't get in the market. I don't have room to plant enough to get more than about 1-2 pounds of dried beans per variety, but the beans are pretty and it's just fun. With green beans, you might consider pole beans. You get a much larger harvest from a small amount of garden space. You also can harvest a lot of it standing up. And the teepees look lovely -- I make mine out of 7- or 8-foot lengths of bamboo. One of the downsides is that you can't use row covers (at least not easily), if you're planning on using covers. You also have to make sure the teepees don't shade something else in the garden. One last downside to teepees is that occasionally a good wind will make them start leaning, especially in the early summer before the beans are strong enough to anchor them. Have fun and good luck with your garden.

It's around 14.5 x 3.5 feet, wanted to go wider but ma wants it narrow for some reason. You don't want it any wider than four feet because your arms would not be long enough to allow your hands to get into the center for weed/mulch maintenance or to pick for harvest. I know folks say to rotate the 'crops' every year to keep pests at bay, but with only tomatoes and peppers going I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that. Even if you have a four by four bed, you can still rotate your crops. Tomatoes and peppers are tropical plants. You can start planning on a fall planting of beans, flowers, cold crops like broccoli, carrots, radishes, lettuce, beets, cabbages, spinach, etc. This will contribute to crop rotation. So long as your plants are healthy and not harboring any disease, then you should be fine. If your plants are diseased, pull up the entire plant including the roots and remove them from your property entirely. Better safe than sorry. Check with your state's Extension Service. Each county should have it's own Cooperative Extension Office which provides free publications and information for the asking. They will have valuable vegetable/gardening tables available specifically for your area determined by universities and horticultural research scientists who have collected data from growing those crops in your state. Your tax dollars are already paying for this service so you may as well get some use out of it. Vegetable Planting and Planning Calendar for Missouri (download the pdf) complete with spring and fall planting dates (underneath the spring planting dates for appropriate crops), how much to plant per person, etc. They can also tell you the average last frost date for your area and ideal planting times for specific crops and varieties in your area. See how detailed this example is: