It's true that soil can harbor pathogens. It's also true that you can go for years without having a problem. I think the key is to rotate when you can, but aside from that just be observant and don't obsess about it. If you're amending with compost and mulching properly, then your plants will probably be strong enough to resist whatever disease may be lurking in the soil. The truth is, there are bacteria, fungal spores, viruses etc. on virtually every square inch of planet Earth anyway, so if you think you're going to avoid them by moving your vegetables a few feet away, well.... you won't. In most cases, your best bet is to make sure your plants have all they need so that they can grow strong and fend for themselves. The whole issue of rotation IS a big deal for farmers, particularly when they practice monoculture, which really invites pests and disease. Unfortunately, instead of rotating their crops, most farmers these days just counter pests and disease with lots of toxic and expensive chemicals. How nice it is to be us! We operate on a smaller scale, largely free of such concerns. That said, a bit of common sense comes in handy too. If you planted your tomatoes over HERE last year and they got late blight or something, and if it's not a big deal to move them over THERE instead this year, well then you should probably do it. No sense tempting fate. Regarding planting cover crops if you've added compost in the spring... sure, go ahead. The only thing is... who has time for a cover crop? Your best bet is to keep your potager planted all season long. As soon as one crop is done, stick another in the same spot. If you've done it right, there won't be any time/space for a cover crop and you'll be getting tons of veggies from your potager from spring well into the fall. -Diggity

I'm going to be the voice of descent here, Rotating your crops is at times effective on a small scale and is at times important. The issue of desease isn't to avoid it entirely, its to reduce the concentration of it. Lets say your 1 sq ft carrot patch gets infested with carrot root nematodes, if you plant your carrots in the same place next year they will instantly be hit with a huge number of nematodes and your harvest will be zilch, however if you move to the other end of the bed very few nematodes will make it, you will probably still have damage, but not on the same scale, better than that would be to use companion planting like the use of marigold to repel nematodes, but for different pests there are different answeres, sometimes rotation is the best answer. Also there are nutrients to think about. Different plants take up different minerals in different concentrations, unless you have micorryhzal fungus running throught the whole bed that every plant is attached too chances are good that different patches are having minerals drained at different rates, now moving one patch over wont have a huges effect, but going from one end of the bed to the other or switching from one 4X4 top another will have an effect, perhaps a small one if done on a year to year basis. By switching plants around you get to use the most your soild can give you with the least amount of ammendment. Also, keep in mind that nearly all melons with the exception of watermelon, all squash and all cucumbers are curcurbits.

Hi all,I just love this forum. I've only been gardening for maybe the past decade in the place i'm at,but i've found that with tomatoes it is best to rotate.In my old garden(which was 20' by 20'),I would just move the mater patch to the next quadrant of the garden.I grew tomatoes, peppers, cukes, broccoli,cauliflower and lettuce. This year I've gone to a raised bed with amended soil, and its working out just fine. Each year in the old garden I would amend heavily with compost. My compost was made of leaves,grass clippings,sawdust,newspaper(shredded),coffee grounds,straw,just about any fruit rind garbage,a bit of topsoil, and very little cow manure.This yrs compost will go into the garden next spring,(08).It has worked very well, although I never seem to make enough of it.I personally think that the only real element that needs close watch when re-planting is nitrogen.Tomatoes draw a lot of it for growth. You said your plants are on 6 ft squares,so you may be safer that most of us because of spacing. By the way: I used to hail from Montgomery co. in Pa.the ONLY time I miss all that heat & humudity is when I look at my tomatoes.

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