Why crop rotation can help your garden (and your knowledge) grow
In “Kitchen Garden Living” (Cool Springs Press, 2025), author Bailey Van Tassel invokes an easily memorized rhyme concerning crop rotation in the vegetable garden: “beans, roots, greens, fruits.”
The idea here is to plant a leguminous crop such as beans that enriches the soil with nitrogen, followed by a light-feeding root crop such as carrots, to be followed by greens (lettuce or cabbage) that will pull a little more nitrogen out of the soil, and then finally to plant a heavy-feeding fruit crop such as tomato or bell pepper.
When it comes to crop rotation and many other horticultural practices, for that matter, there is more than one opinion on the subject, proving that gardening is as much an art or a craft specific to every garden as it is a science. Eliot Coleman, considered the dean of vegetable growers in this country, follows his legume planting of peas or beans with a leaf crop (lettuce or cabbage), followed by a root crop and then a fruit crop. To be extra cautious, Coleman recommends an 8-year crop rotation, to deter soil-dwelling pests, as follows: tomatoes, peas, cabbage, corn, potatoes, squash, a root crop (carrots, radishes, beets, onions), and beans. He also suggests planting a leguminous, green manure cover crop between rotation cycles. Clover is excellent green manure and it should be dug into the soil not only for the nitrogen it provides but for its stimulation of beneficial soil microorganism activity. Incorporate the clover into the soil when it is still young and before it flowers. The mineral content of the leaves reaches its pinnacle just before flowering, whereupon those minerals are channeled into seed production. Furthermore, a young crop decomposes more quickly than an older crop that is allowed to flower.
Van Tassel presents a simple solution to a soil that is especially difficult to work. It’s a “no-dig method” where you put down layers of various organic composts and other amendments. When the piles or berms are 12 inches tall, you plant the vegetables of your desire in the perfect designer soil berms of your creation. Meanwhile, you can work on amending the surrounding soil for future planting.
Van Tassel endorses the planting potatoes since “once you grow them, you will never not grow them.” She says there is always a tuber or two that you leave behind from which more tubers will grow. This I have found to be true and might add that the same holds true for garlic, whose cloves based on my experience can be planted at any time in this part of the world. Just go to the grocery store, pick out a few garlic bulbs, separate their cloves, and plant them two inches deep in average garden soil. You will begin to see green shoots soon enough. You can harvest these for consumption or just let the garlic develop until the shoots turn brown which means that the cloves have become bulbs and are ready to be extracted from the earth. Make sure you keep the paper covering on your cloves intact because that prevents them from drying out and can preserve them in storage for up to a year.
The author does well in emphasizing the importance of a garden journal. It is the best way of learning about vegetable plant requirements on your particular patch of ground. Essential information would include planting date and variety planted, dates and quantity of each water application, harvest dates and quantity of each crop, along with a daily description of the weather. Such information will be invaluable the next time you plant this crop.
Keeping a garden journal is also useful for recording those sudden flashes of discovery due to unexpected garden events. As an example, Van Tassel cites the following incident: “A couple of autumns ago,” she writes, “my son ripped open a packet of bok choi seeds, dumped them onto our hard clay soil, and we soon discovered they grew just fine in the horrible growing conditions. In my garden journal, there’s now a line about bok choi: ‘does fine in clay soil.’”
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Over the last few years, mini-poinsettias have appeared at nurseries and garden centers. These do not represent a new strain of poinsettia but are simply plants that have been miniaturized through growing conditions. Poinsettia cuttings are exposed to limited light prior to when this procedure is typically done to force the developing bracts (modified leaves) to turn color. Then they are kept in small pots to limit root growth. Since they are in tiny pots, you will want to soak them in water overnight to make sure they are fully hydrated upon placement in your home, where you want to provide them with excellent light. You must then keep their soil moist or they will quickly expire. Many of these mini-poinsettias are grown in self-watering pots with a reservoir of water at the bottom and a wick that takes water up from the reservoir into the soil. Make sure there is a 1/2 inch of water in the reservoir at all times so that your mini-poinsettia can sip from it at will. This intense watering regime only applies to mini-poinsettias. Standard poinsettias
California native of the week: California bay tree (Umbellularia californica) handles both sun and partial sun exposures and Is related to the sweet bay whose leaves are prized for culinary purposes. California bay leaves may also be used in cooking, although they are more pungent than conventional bay leaves. California bay is highly sensitive to its surrounding microclimate, remaining at a shrub’s size growing on a windy hilltop adjacent to the Northern California coast or in an arid Southern California environment, while skying to 75 feet under forest conditions. You can expect it to reach around 25 feet tall in Southern California gardens where it is a reasonable option when considering candidates for a tall hedge. Bay trees belong to Lauraceae or laurel family of plants that includes other species with aromatic leaves. One of these is camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora) and another is avocado (Persea americana), whose Mexican varieties such as Mexicola have foliage with a powerful anise fragrance, and even Hass (a Mexican and Guatemalan avocado hybrid) emits a hint of anise when its foliage is crushed.
Last week I wrote about colorful fall foliage but left out the O’Neal blueberry bush. It has all the gold and crimson and burgundy you could want in a deciduous shrub, to say nothing of its abundance of sweet fruit harvested in May and June.
It’s possible to grow poinsettias outdoors and you are welcome to send your story if you have succeeded in this endeavor to joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions and comments, as well as any gardening problems or their solutions that have come your way, are always welcome.