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Four bed crop rotation | Sustainable Gardening Australia (www.sgaonline.org.au)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Trying to get my head around crop rotation.

It’s not traditionally used for pots I don’t think but I just can’t face the physical job of emptying and sterilising all the soil and pots or buying more potting mix after the tomatoes and zucchini are spent. (They got hit by black spot and powdery mildew despite the spraying.)

I’m willing to pull out and dispose of the spent diseased plants afterwards and maybe dig in some manure but am trying to avoid the physical labour of emptying the pots and thought of treating them more like a garden bed.

Maybe I’ll try just chucking a different fungal resistant plant in there afterwards. Perhaps it might be ok if I choose resistant hybrids. Beans and peas are recommended after tomatoes and zucchini to restore nitrogen but also get fungal diseases so I don’t know.

I could just be lazy and do a manure crop over autumn or winter.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I do crop rotation on my pots. It's a good time to refresh the soil with dung and other organic waste. Don't throw your apparently too chunky potato scraps in there though. I use similar principles to the garden bed. My tomatoes suffer less disease and in fact my next crop of cherry tomatoes should be ready to eat next week.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That’s good it works then. I’ve done something unpleasant to my lower back so it might be easier to take this approach.

Debating whether I can lift a manure bag right now but fingers crossed the soreness resolves.

My zucchini look to be on their way out so tossing up between any fungal resistant peas/beans or mustard as a manure crop

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I would chuck some peas/snow peas any legume in there next. Fairly fast growing so you should get something out of them before we get too far into winter and legumes will be the best bang for buck for the soil. Then i would go brassica like mustard greens later.

In pots you can cheat a little from the traditional legume - brassica (leafy) - fruits and nightshades (toms/potato/zucc) - root veg because you can top up with some manure or potting mix.