I was inspired to create my own crop rotation sheet (feel free to download for your own use) based on one I saw at the blog One Straw. Crop rotation is where you alternate the variety of crops planted in a bed to avoid soil depletion and give a chance to build up the soil health with cover crops between main plantings. A simple way to think about rotation that i picked from the John Jeavons book How to Grow More Vegetables is follow Heavy Feeders with Heavy Givers and then Light Feeders. Basically this means after growing plants that require more nutrients from the soil, like nightshades and corn (plants that also tend to need more sun), plant a crop that enriches the soil. Many legumes give back. Then follow these with a plant that requires less nutrition. Leafy greens, turnips and sweet potatoes are light feeders.
 
I’ve known this and thought I was practicing rotation to some degree. Over the last four years, I have kept some semblance of notes on what I have planted, when and where. However, I have never really gone through the notes to amass the information and see what that means for my garden beds. I decided to enter in all my notes into a crop planner and take a look at planting patterns. That was a very interesting and useful project. Through this backtracking and using a spacial representation I was able to identify my patterns of plantings. I had no idea my plantings were so willy nilly. I felt so organized just to get something in the dirt.
 
I realized that I had planted nightshades in one bed for the last three summers. What was I thinking? I knew I had two years in a row but I thought since I had planted an ample fava forest in between, I’d be okay. Nope. The harvest was poorly. But I had no idea I had done that three years in a row. I guess I thought that if I plant tomatoes in the summer, then favas in the fall and lettuces and greens in the spring, I could do tomatoes in the summer again but like I said, the third year of tomatoes was sad
 
Well, lessons learned. At least now with my new crop planner, I can plan out my beds more appropriately.
 
Note: While I am familiar with the Greek alphabet, for my worksheet I chose a more creative interpretation inspired by Parliament’s “Psycho Alpha Disco Beta Bio Aqua Do Loop.”