I plant my tomatoes in the same place every year and they grow well. I top dress with lots of compost in early spring. I add additional compost for a fertilizer boost during the summer.

This is the organic Gardening thread! Some interesting points have been expressed in the thread. One of the key organic principles is replenishment; of course referring to nutrients and organic matter. The use of cover crops, rotations, intercropping, green manures, recycling refuse and manure to name a few, fill the replenishment options. That certainly does not preclude the organic amendments for deficient nutrients or adjustment of pH. The OP specifically poised the rotation topic. It compels me to ask of those who plant the same plants in the same location, "What do you proclaim to be the cause of pests and disease?" If a plant(s) succumbs to a pest or disease in that location from year to year, do you not think that the origin might be the soil? Rotation is primarily directed at avoidance of direct exposure to pests and disease that exist in the soil. While there is also truth in healthy soil reducing the impact of pests and diseases, moving the host plant to a fresh location reduces the incidence. The continuos presence of the host (as mentioned by Peter) continues the cyles of pests and disease without interruption. By rotating crops you insert a non-host species or one that is antagonistic to that pest or disease (i.e. - marigolds for nematodes). Diversity of planting is also an enhancement, especially for pests and disease. The availability of nutrients is also a factor in the growth rate of the plants; a plant growing too fast or slow suffers stresses which are invitation to pests and diseases. Being in a zone 5 and growing many long season heirlooms I am compelled to start most for transplanting. Timing the starts attempts to have a strong plant able to adapt easily when placed within the suitable growing conditions. Transplants also permit me to properly prepare the beds. For me rotation means having a growing plant or crop in the soil 70-80% of the year. A fall green manure and/or cover crop is part of the plan. Timing of fall sowing may require inter-seeding to permit suitable germination and growth before first frost. Turning under the spring growth prior to transplanting adds nutrients and organic matter which must be given 2-3 weeks for initial decomposition; so not to starve the transplants of nitrogen. Rotation does have a part in the small and medium scale. For my two distance-separated plots totalling nearly 10,000 square feet it is simple to rotate plantings by simply leapfrogging beds. My five year rotation plan shifts each wide (3 feet) bed about 21 feet (including the paths). For nutrient replentishment I strictly limit amendments to compost, composted manure (cattle/horse) and green manure. My soil is tested every three years for comparison. My nutrient management plan is based on improvement versus maintenance. My primary plot is sand which has produced for nearly 40 years. A new plot of silt-loam on a beef farm has been in production for me over five years. My only bad year was 2009 due to very brief summer weather and only about 30% sunny days. I'm sticking to my rotation plan.

Just got on this forum (usually read Ozarks Region) and I'm sorry no one has responded. As changable as Missouri weather is and as late as it is now, I don't know if you would get much growth from anything you planted. Why not start collecting leaves and such from your neighbors' yards and just pile them on your garden? There will be much more decay through the winter than you would think possible then next spring, pull the remaining leaves aside to plant your crops. May I suggest Pat Lanza's book "Lasagna Gardening" or Ruth Stout's "How To Have A Green Thumb Without An Aching Back." Both authors are proponents of deep mulch gardening and sheet composting although Ruth is without doubt the mother of these systems. Also check out the Soil, Compost and Mulch Forum on this site. To get a jump start on fertility next spring, you could get a bag or two of alfalfa pellets at a feed store to spread on your plot before you spread the leaves. If you can shred them or a neighbor kindly shredded them as they gathered the leaves, all the better. I've been gardening on this farm for 10 years now and I still add plenty of shredded leaves, grass clippings, manure and spoiled hay to my gardens every year. The closest to fertilizer that I use is activated compost tea. More about that on the soil, mulch, compost forum too. Good luck.

No nasty popup this morning! A pleasant surprise when I came to read! I've been growing my tomatoes in the exact same spot for ten years now! I only have one place for a veggie garden, and it's on the east side of a two-story house! I picked the sunniest part of the available space for the tomatoes and eggplants--my most important crops! The tomatoes go in the area which is just past the back/northeast corner of the house, so, while most of the veggie garden only gets sun until midday when it moves too far past the house, the tomatoes get sun for all of the morning, and then again after it moves "past" the house at some point in the afternoon--and pretty much until it sets. Tomatoes need SUN, and I'd much rather take my chances of them getting some disease than I would of them not getting enough sun and failing that way! In all the years I've been growing them there, I've never yet had an Epic Fail! Each year one or two plants have some kind of a problem, and when I see something going wrong I keep and "problem leaves" cut off of those plants! I, long ago, stopped trying to figure out just exactly WHAT the problem is! As I've said around here many times by now, if you ask 10 different people "what's wrong" with a tomato plant, you're gonna get 10 different answers! I haven't yet removed an entire plant when "something goes wrong," tho I usually get very few tomatoes from one of those plants! Oh! And when I notice something is "going wrong," with just about anything, it immediately gets a "Palmolive dish washing soap bath!" That's my cure all for just about anything--tho it seems to help less with tomatoes than with most other things! [I keep a 2-gallon pressure sprayer filled with my Cure All!] For earwigs, which can decimate an entire rhubarb plant in less than 24 hours, and which is right next to my tomatoes, I use Bug-B-Gon--no, I'm not organic, and for slugs I use slug bait, whichever is the cheapest. I put too much into my plants, both veggies and perennials to let some little bugs destroy them--and bugs can carry diseases! After I plant them (mine still aren't in the ground--I'm, in the HEAT, trying desperately to get the soil turned over right now!) I mulch them with a THICK layer of leaves from the previous fall, that have been laying out there all winter in the bags insulating the soil so the worms can be Doing Their Thing all winter! The leaves are far and away the best mulch I've found! They hold the water like having layers of sponges laying on top of the soil, and my watering has been cut back substantially since I started using them. In fall they get dug into the soil if I have time, or they get eaten by the worms--under the leaf bags--if I don't have time! In the beginning I used grass clipping as a mulch, but I never had enough and they weren't very effective. I NEVER put tomato plants--even little bits--on my compost pile. Partly because of the possibility of disease, and partly because I don't have a HOT compost pile and the seeds, usually from cherry tomatoes, wind up coming up ALL over my yard! And I do tend to cut off the lower leaves that are in contact with the mulch. Not sure why I do that--just like things looking as good as possible, and a bunch of yellow ratty leaves on the bottom don't look good! So if you're looking for testimony that tomatoes can be grown, pretty much successfully, in the same spot every year, here is that testimony! Gotta go! Have some Potter's Clay I need to be turning over! My tomatoes are asking for water twice a day now in their little 3" pots, and pretty soon they're gonna be screaming bloody murder at me every time I walk by them! Try it and see what happens! You can always change it down the road if it's not workin' for ya! Skybird P.S. Don't ya just LOVE spellcheck, Digit! Sometimes it has me totally cracking up! TOTALLY! EDITED TO ADD: This is their home! [Just noticed, this is when I was still using the grass clippings!] https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Cw1NBnPiOxC6jnPDeHXRmS6_rfsMNJ4Ltqzjr_Nq_pc?feat=directlink https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/QqJl2BfmWwhTZsiVqbjG7i6_rfsMNJ4Ltqzjr_Nq_pc?feat=directlink https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/vFZDkIzz0uAqYRK5KFOXgC6_rfsMNJ4Ltqzjr_Nq_pc?feat=directlink