Edible garden: Crop rotation

It's time to rotate your crops. Photo / Supplied

If you want your vegetable garden to yield great crops with minimal disease over a long time, you need to practise crop rotation and now is a good time to start. Crop rotation simply means following one crop with a different one.

I divide my garden into quarters and each year move the plants one square. In one I plant any of these: cucumber, squash, zucchini, pumpkins, melons. In another, root veges. In the third, peas and beans, and in the last, potatoes.

I cover the first bed, with the squashes in, with rich compost. By the time the root vegetables move in the compost isn't too rich for them. Peas and beans add nitrogen to the soil so, when the potatoes move in, they produce large crops in the nitrogen-rich soil.

Some people like a three-bed rotation with roots and bulbs in one plot, such as carrots, potatoes, beetroot and onions. This is followed by fruit and seeds, like peas, beans, tomatoes, capsicum, sweet corn and courgettes. The third plot is leaf and stem crops: cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, lettuce, silver beet, spinach, brussels and sprouts.

The only important rule is that you don't grow the same annual crops in the same soil year after year. You can design a beautiful rotational plot divided by brick paths, hedges or raised beds. With winter on its way, get some graph paper and plan out your perfect vege patch.