GOOD WAY TO REMEMBER ROTATION PLAN – THIRD WEEK IN OCTOBER 2009

Trevor Sargent — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:53:12 +0000

The growing interest in amenity fruit and vegetable growing has given rise to the mushrooming of initiatives such as www.giyireland.com. In Balbriggan the local Horticultural Society has launched a course of workshops on vegetable growing co-ordinated by committee member, great local gardener [and indeed chef] Judith Chavasse. Her neighbour and veg growing expert Dave gave the first lecture. He emphasised the importance of laying out the growing area, ideally in six patches. One of the patches is for permanent crops like rhubarb (which can be planted now) or asparagus or blackcurrants, raspberries etc.

Five different families of vegetables are rotated annually around the other five patches. There is now an easy way to remember which crop goes in the first patch, which in the second, third and so on. The aide memoire is ‘People Love Bunches Of Roses‘ which gives P-L-B-O-R. So plant potato family crops in the first patch, legumes in the second, brassicas in third, onion family and leeks etc in fourth and root crop in the fifth. When root crops are harvested, that patch gets enriched with compost and/or manure again to take the seed potatoes the next Spring. The same order is observed with each crop family moving up one patch in the rotation.

Thank you to Dave and the Balbriggan and District Horticultural Society for taking the guesswork out of which comes first in a rotation, legumes or brassicas!

Getting started

Trevor Sargent — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:07:36 +0000

Before you pick up your spade, it’s a very good idea to take the time to plan your garden. Right from the beginnning, I knew I wanted to have four small plots so that I could “rotate” my cops from one plot to the next each year. There are very good reasons for doing this. More about rotation later.

To make my four plots, I began by measuring out the area I needed to dig them. Lucky for me, I had a few old doors which I found in a skip. These were ideal for marking out the plot areas. They also gave me a nice straight, firm edge when I came to dig out the soil.

Using some old doors to mark out the plots.

The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say “adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.” Good gardening involves both patience and a resolve to seize the moment. “For everything there is a season…”

The ideal food growing area for me is enough space to dig four small plots. However, four large pots, bins, buckets, window boxes or any reasonably large container would allow one to make a start. You’lll notice I talk about four plots quite a lot and may have wondered why four? See this article on the subject.

The next thing to decide was what to grow, and which plot to grow it in. I started with a sketch of my planting area, a bit like this one:

In Plot 1 I decided to plant my onion family, the easiest food to grow using onion sets).

Plot 2 is for pea and bean family members.

Plot 3 will have the cabbage family .

Plot 4 will grow my favourites, beetroot and leaf beet (which is just like spinach, but hardier and easier to grow.)

I decided at an early stage to have concrete pathways between and around my plots.

Trevor's Kitchen Garden » planning

GOOD WAY TO REMEMBER ROTATION PLAN – THIRD WEEK IN OCTOBER 2009

Getting started