GARDEN CROPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 June 1941, Page 2

GARDEN CROPS

ROTATION SHOULD BE FOLLOWED. Where vegetables are produced on the same piece of ground for many years crop rotation should be given special consideration. Rarely is it wise to grow the same crop for more than two consecutive seasons in the same piece of ground. For gardens where the soil is poor or where the supply of manure is limited, crop rotation has a distinct value.

Each crop takes out of the soil certain chemical elements and leaves the soil enriched in others. Peas and beans take nitrogen from the air and leave it in the soil Tor the following crops. All plants do not get their food: supply from the same depth, so do not 1-iant a tap-rooted crop where one grew the year before. Crops so similar in habit and nature as cabbages, cauliflowers. broccoli, kale, and all the cabbage family, should never follow one another. They use from the soil the same chemical properties, which will scon become exhausted unless the soil is given a rest or by cropping with! some other wind of plant for at least! a year. i

Apart from the plant .food reasons there is another of equal importance. The growing of any vegetable, say cabbage, continually on the same piece of ground makes the soil liable to become infested with blight, thus making it difficult to grow the crop to pei’fection. When, a proper system of crop rotation is practised much disease is starved out and better and healthier crops are produced.

The garden should be divided into four plots, one to contain the permanent crops such as asparagus, rhubarb, and seakale. The other three can then be used for different crons every year. The easiest way is to plant fibrousrooted crops, such as cabbage, cauliflowers, savoys, broccoli, peas, and beans in the first plot; the tap-rooted vegetables such as parsnips, carrots, and beetroot in the second plot; and the tubers, such as potatoes, onions, and so on, in the third plot. Next year the fibrous-rooted vegetables will be followed by tubers, the tap-rooted by fibrous-rooted, and the tubers by the tap-rooted. The third year the first plot will contain tap-rooted, the second tubers, and third fibrous-rooted.

In adopting this plan of cropping each plot will need to be trenched only’ every third year, and then for the deep-rooting crops only.