Crop Rotation on Your Allotment Plot

To rotate your crops each season, provides a wealth of benefits to your plot.

Varieties of crops attract certain pests, diseases as well as drawing the same nutrient requirements from the soil. By rotating them, you're helping to reduce disease and keeping control of pests as well as weed control in some cases and maintaining a good quality soil. That's not to say that sometimes more help is required such as compost, mulch dependent on a range of factors such as moisture, soil type and what you plan to grow next.

By rotating your crops, you help to provide a natural balance.

Crop rotation can be simply implemented by dividing your plot into sections. The sizes will depend on how much you want to grow of any one type of crop.

When it's time to plant out, you will want to plant in sections as per the plant variety or family they belong to, which has the same growing requirements.

For example Root vegetables, Brassicas, Legumes, Potatoes and Allium family.

You can refer to our Companion Planting page also to find out what works well together and which to keep apart.

After the harvest of that section or the following season you will want to move each plant family to an alternative section as it will have depleted the existing one of it's nutrients required of that crop and may have attracted pests and disease  associated with that crop, which of course will need treating.

By rotating over a 3-4 year period will help give the soil chance to recover. Here we will give you a guide on a traditional 3 and 4 year crop rotation to help you. In summary you will move each section one foward each time and then start at the beginning again.

Year 1
Patch 1 Potatoes
Patch 2 Legumes, onions and roots
Patch 3 Brassicas

Year 2
Patch 1 Legumes, onions and roots
Patch 2 Brassicas
Patch 3 Potatoes

Year 3
Patch 1 Brassicas
Patch 2 Potatoes
Patch 3 Legumes, onions and roots

For a 4 year rotation plan:

Year 1
Patch 1 Legumes
Patch 2 Brassicas
Patch 3 Potatoes
Patch 4 Onions and roots

Year 2
Patch 1 Brassicas
Patch 2 Potatoes
Patch 3 Onions and roots
Patch 4 Legumes

Year 3
Patch 1 Potatoes
Patch 2 Onions and roots
Patch 3 Legumes
Patch 4 Brassicas

Year 4
Patch 1 Onions and roots
Patch 2 Legumes
Patch 3 Brassicas
Patch 4 Potatoes