How to Rotate Crops in Raised Beds

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When I plan my vegetable gardens each year, I consider what I planted in my raised beds and extra pots. As with in-ground planting, raised beds also need to have the crops rotated each year for optimal growth and disease resistance.

Rotating your crops in a raised bed involves organization and refraining from planting a given family of plants in the same area each year. Soil is rested as different nutrients are utilized depending on the grown plants. It also helps microbe diversity.

Table of Contents

Information like possible planting schemes, benefits and possible considerations for crop rotation in raised bed gardening will be extensively covered in this article, so do read on!

Crop rotation for raised bed gardening

Crop rotation is a simple concept: you don’t plant the same or similarly related crop in the same spot back to back. Instead, you rotate different crops in the exact location.

Crop rotation hosts different benefits for your soil and the plants, often producing healthier plants and a better harvest than you would get if you continued to plant tomatoes in the same raised bed.

Many experts suggest a five to seven-year rotation cycle. However, it may be challenging if you have limited gardening space, as it requires five o seven raised garden beds or areas.

Crop rotation rundown process

The good news is you don’t have to completely move between raised garden beds year after year, although that is the ideal situation.

Moving plants from one end of the raised bed to another or planting your tomatoes in whiskey barrels for a season can be hugely beneficial when you give your raised beds a break for a year or two.

Crop rotation and its benefits

Aside from giving the raised beds rest for a period and improving the soil quality, there are many specific benefits for the crops when doing crop rotation.

Eradicate pests in raised beds by rotating crops

The main reasons for crop rotation are finding possible diseases and pests that can take up residence in a given area and multiply in your soil, even under ideal conditions.

If you do conduct crop rotation during the said resting period of the raised beds, you will be able to see said pests and diseases and move to eradicate them before they feast on your future crops.

Crop rotation can prevent nematode infestation in your raised bed

Nematodes and tomatoes are other common examples: the nematodes will stick around in your soil if you don’t move the tomatoes around, and these pests can weaken your tomato plant’s root system.

Soil improvement is a definite benefit when doing crop rotation

The other key reason for crop rotation and moving your crops around between your raised garden beds and planters are improving the soil.

Different plants utilize different nutrients when they grow and can change the properties of your soil.

Root crops like carrots and onions help break up the soil as they grow, allowing air and water to move through the soil more easily. Beans and other legumes fix nitrogen in nodules in their root systems and leave it behind after the season’s growth, helping feed plants the next growing season.

Raised bed gardening – what is it really

We have talked about the crop rotation part for this article, so we also need to have a refresher on raised bed gardening.

Raised bed gardening is often used when the garden soil is mostly rock or not best for growing.

This gardening type provides benefits such as protecting plants against insect infestation and possible flooding during heavy rains. It is also said to promote warmer soil conditions in springtime.

Raised garden beds have so many benefits for the garden, some of which you would never have thought of. I couldn’t cover them all in this article, which is why I wrote this post that covers that subject in complete detail.

Ways to Supplement Your Raised Garden Beds

The primary way to increase your available gardening space, and thus areas to rotate crops in, is to increase the number of raised garden beds available.

If you choose to build your own raised garden beds, here are a few simple tips:

Raised gardening bed sizing

Decide how big you want your raised bed to be. Ideally, it should not be more than 4 feet wide or as wide as you can reach without stepping on the soil. This helps prevent the soil from getting compacted, quickly occurring if you’re stepping on it or leaning into it to weed or harvest vegetables.

Raised gardening bed depth and bottom

Make sure your raised bed is deep enough for any vegetables or plant root systems you might be putting in there. For example, carrots need ample growing room, especially if you put a bottom in your raised garden bed or place the bed over a hard surface such as a driveway.

It is incredible how many people ask me about adding bottoms to their raised garden beds. And you would think it is an easy question to answer, but the truth is it depends, and I go into full depth on the subject in this article.

Also, consider lining the bottom of your raised garden bed with mesh or chicken wire.

This will help prevent burrowing animals from getting into your raised bed.

Where to place your raised gardening bed

Don’t construct your raised garden bed on areas such as a wooden deck, where the weight of the water and the soil could cause your structure to collapse.

You can use space on your wooden deck: it’s ideal for sticking with a smaller, lighter planting box. These can also be mobile and move around from place to place.

Irrigation considerations for raised gardening beds

As you plan your raised garden bed, decide how to irrigate it. Setting up a drip irrigation system is often easier before your raised bed is fully assembled and filled with soil.

You can construct your own raised garden bed. They are relatively easy to create, if not time-consuming, process. Or you can also opt to get pre-designed kits to assemble yourself.

Making the Most of Crop Rotation with Raised bed gardening

First, you need to plan everything. If you have never kept a journal, now is the right time to start. A gardening journal is hugely beneficial to help you see what worked year after year, what plants you liked, and what was most prolific in your garden — intentionally or not (zucchini, anyone?).

Agriculture is not crop production as popular belief holds – it’s the production of food and fiber from the world’s land and waters. Without agriculture it is not possible to have a city, stock market, banks, university, church or army. Agriculture is the foundation of civilization and any stable economy.

Allan Savory

You need to consider what you will grow in your garden for at least the next couple of years, if not longer. Sketch your plan on graph paper and consider how much space each plant will need. You can even number sections of your raised garden beds and move plants through them in numerical order.

Consider doing square-foot gardening within your raised beds

Now is the right time to consider square-foot gardening. If you haven’t heard of this before, it was developed by Mel Bartholomew. He was an engineer and popularized this method of growing plants in square-foot sections of your garden.

Raised garden beds are great for the square foot method, and you can rotate plants through the raised bed if it is divided up into sections.

You can move plants from left to right and front to back to vary where they grow each year in your raised garden bed.

Square foot gardening has gotten very popular over recent years. Still, the information is very spartan and disjointed, so I wrote this article to explain precisely what square-foot gardening is and how to get the best from it.

Process of doing square-foot gardening for crop rotation in raised garden beds

For best results with crop rotation, you need to move plants from raised garden beds to other raised garden beds or planting boxes or barrels, but even rotating them through sections can be helpful. You may also switch up what you grow yearly, particularly if you only have one raised garden bed.

Spend one year focused on tomatoes, and another focused on root vegetables. This can let you try new crops and varieties and change what is growing in your soil.

Considerations for conducting square-foot gardening for crop rotation in raised garden beds

Another feature when planning your raised garden bed that some suggest is not filling in all the “holes” in your planting scheme.

While square-foot gardening uses every planting space, having a few areas of your garden open can help you maintain a healthy crop rotation scheme.

Freshen up your soil in your raised bed gardening for your crop rotation

Start yourself out on the right foot by using high-quality soil, amendments, and plants. When you start a raised bed, use high-quality raised bed soil that won’t readily pack down.

Every year, refresh the soil as needed, such as at the start of the spring, to ensure you have adequate levels for your raised garden bed to boost further the health and growth of the crops you rotate within it.

You can consider the soil revitalizer company Miracle-Gro to help refresh and replenish the soil structure and nutrients within your garden bed.

These additions can also help your raised garden bed’s soil retain water better, as raised beds typically have much higher drainage than in-ground gardens. You must mix it into your raised garden bed soil and follow the directions.

Consider doing soil tests for your raised bed crops

Like with an in-ground garden bed, it’s a good idea to have your soil tested yearly.

You can get simple tests at many hardware stores and nurseries to check the pH of your soil. Still, more complete tests are available through laboratories and your local Cooperative Extension office.

Before you plant your garden, it is imperative that you know what your soil consists of and its PH. There are small test kits you can buy to do this at home and send samples to a laboratory.

It might sound like a lot of work or even confuse you, but it isn’t that hard, and I have a complete guide on the subject that will walk you through the whole process and why you need to do it.

Look into getting seedlings locally for crop rotation within your raised garden beds.

If you don’t start your seedlings, consider getting healthy plants growing in your region from a local nursery. This helps ensure they adapt to your growing environment and do better than plants imported from a different USDA growing zone.

Feeding the plants appropriately with plant food after adding a healthy dose of compost to your soil can also maximize their growth.

Filling Raised Garden Beds For Free

Discover the secret to filling your raised garden bed for FREE using cheap, natural, and organic methods! In this video, Tony O’Neill from Simplify Gardening will guide you through the Hugelkultur technique to create a moisture-retentive and nutrient-rich environment for your plants, all while saving money and being eco-friendly. 🌱💧🌿

Learn how to gather and use materials like rotting logs, garden trimmings, woodchips, cardboard, cow manure, and homemade compost to fill your raised garden bed. We’ll also discuss the pros and cons of raised garden beds and how they can benefit your gardening experience. Plus, don’t miss out on Tony’s book recommendation, “Composting Masterclass,” for mastering the art of creating nutrient-rich compost at home. 📘🌟🌻

Get ready to transform your gardening game and watch your plants thrive with these sustainable, cost-effective methods! Click through to watch now, and don’t forget to like and subscribe for more gardening tips and tricks. 📺👍🌼

Crop rotation planting schemes and also no-no’s

To maximize your growing times and plant health, you must plan what you will plant in your garden every year.

We will be including suggested planting schemes for four raised gardening beds in the next section.

Beds	First bed	Second bed	Third bed	Fourth bed
Planting scheme #1	Plant onions or spinach, then tomatoes, then beans in the fall.	You could plant cabbage, summer squash, and lovely ornamental corn in the fall.	Opt to plant peppers and sweet corn, followed by garlic or turnips	Have the same as the third bed plants.
Planting scheme #2	Plant potatoes and tomatoes in your first garden bed and then sow onions for overwintering.	In bed two, sow carrots and parsley, and add manure in the winter	For your third garden bed, grow brassicas during the summer, followed by winter varieties of your favorite cabbage or Brussels sprouts.	In your fourth raised bed, plant legumes such as beans. After harvesting, add lime to plant brassicas next.

Maximizing what plants you are growing in each space can help you produce healthy plants in your raised garden bed vegetable garden.

In line with these planting schemes, we will also discuss some considerations when planning your raised garden bed. They include:

Plant brassicas after legumes

Your cabbage and kale are best planted in areas where you have previously grown beans and peas. Because the legumes fix nitrogen into the soil, they offer ample nutrition to other plants. The brassicas do well in the nutrient-rich conditions that the legumes have created.

While potatoes also really like nitrogen-rich soil, you need to make sure not to plant brassicas and potatoes beside each other because they both like differing pH levels.

Legumes are great to plant after members of the nightshade family due to their nitrogen-fixing capabilities. Don’t harvest all of the beans from the plants to make the most of their ability to fix nitrogen. Then till the plants into the ground before planting your brassicas.

Don’t plant root vegetables in areas that you have fertilized heavily

When you plant root vegetables in vibrant soil, the plants tend to produce rather lush foliage rather than focusing the plant’s growing on its root veggie portion.

Consider planting the root vegetables in an area you have just harvested brassicas. The brassicas will appreciate the heavy feeding and break down the rich components in the soil.

We have given all these considerations and benefits to crop rotation with raised bed gardening. Let us also look into the other side and possible problems with these planting methods.

Problems with Crop Rotation and a Raised Bed

Unfortunately, as noted previously, there are limitations with raised garden beds, namely how much room they take up and how many you have. It is impractical to have five to seven raised garden beds for most small-scale or home gardeners.

Possible disease and pest build-up from select planting schemes

In addition, even with limited spaces, some people often have a specific reason for having a vegetable garden. Maybe you like tomatoes and peppers, and that’s what you plan to grow in your one-raised garden bed.

Eventually, if you keep growing these nightshade family members in the same area, you will have a significant problem with diseases and pests building up.

Possible soil replacement from not-very-good planting schemes

There are some potential answers to getting around the puzzle of crop rotation, such as selecting disease-resistant plant varieties.

One way to solve wrong crop rotation schemes would be soil replacement, which can be costly and time-consuming.

You could also not grow your tomatoes and peppers for a year, letting the pests migrate elsewhere and starting over new the following year.

Planting methods for limited space considerations

With all that standing in your way, finding a manageable way to rotate your crops is still the best course of action. Consider adding raised garden bed after your first year or getting a few planting barrels.

You could plant tomatoes and peppers in your new planting barrels one year and then plant them in the raised garden bed the following year.

Here are various ways to increase your growing space, even in a limited amount of room.

Planting methods to combat limited space	Their benefits and how to do them
Raised planting boxes	These can also spare your back the effort of bending over to pull weeds and harvest vegetables.
Vertical growing arrangements	You can get specially designed growing towers or make your own. A food-grade plastic barrel can have holes cut into the sides to plant around a central section where you may put compost and worms to help the plants grow.
Planting barrels	These can significantly add to your garden aesthetic. Wooden barrels look quite lovely, positioned evenly in front of your house or around your raised garden beds. A more straightforward approach is using grow bags that may be disposed of r reusable year to year, allowing you to move plants around as you need to.

Consider ways to make these planting options work for you. If you usually garden in your backyard, consider adding vegetables to your front flower bed.

Before starting crop rotation, you must consider if you even need to do it. Let me explain. If you are growing various crops in the same bed successional, this process might not even be needed. I recently did a live stream with a master gardener, and we discussed this topic. You can watch that life below.

FAQs

Conclusion on how to rotate crops on raised beds

Combining crop rotation with raised bed gardening, especially for areas with soil that cannot foster proper plant growth, is a good way of working around a problem. This still gives you good produce from your garden, especially with different varieties that you and your family can enjoy.

However, keep careful records of where you have planted each plant. If you avoid planting your vegetables in the same place year after year, you minimize the possibility of diseases and pests developing in the exact location.

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