Vegetable rotation plan

[djayz]

I thought this might be useful for people who have little/no experience growing their own veggies. 

 

https://www.co.thurston.wa.us/health/ehcsg/pdf/CSG_VegeGarden_sglpg.pdf

[cooked]

I thought this might be useful for people who have little/no experience growing their own veggies. 
 
https://www.co.thurston.wa.us/health/ehcsg/pdf/CSG_VegeGarden_sglpg.pdf

I'm pretty sure that these rules are only partially applicable in Thailand. They depend on at least some of the organic content of the soil still being available one and two years later. They won't.
The only "rotation" of crop's that I do involves the avoidance of planting certain vegetables that just don't work in my particular case. Tomatoes for instance.


Sent from my iris88_go using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[kickstart]

I was always told that heavy feeders where root crops especially potatoes, and salad crops where light feeders, the rhubarb I grew in gardens I had aways inherited it and did very little to it, and it still grew every year.

Must agree with cooked rules are almost different here in Thailand with the soil being so short of almost everything.

So,can someone tell me how Thais can grow cassava on the same soil for some years on the trot without any major disease problems, unless there  is and I have not noticed it ,they always seem to get a crop, and this year with sugar cane price low and cassava prices good, they are a lot more  cassava being grown in this area .

 

[user343434]

For a Newbies its sure a first little guideline not to get hernia in cabbage..

beside rotation in our hot climate its more of an issue to control bugs which are present throughout the year.

Onions and carrots for example keeping each other's flies off. (Companion planting called)

Baking powder sugar mix makes ants 'exploding' before they even get the aphids to the plant..

or try to fight the asparagus beetle and pumpkin bug and if you have success become a Millionaire to sell the remedies. 

 

Start your garden with salad and after a few generations of plants you might think of heavy feeders like tomatoes, that's right.

 

[djayz]

3 hours ago, kickstart said:

So,can someone tell me how Thais can grow cassava on the same soil for some years on the trot without any major disease problems

I've quite often though about that as well. I see the same fields being planted with crop of cassava after crop of cassava, year after year. The only thing they seem to do to the land is add chicken manure. I just assumed that cassava is more disease tolerant that other crops... 

 

[djayz]

8 hours ago, cooked said:

I'm pretty sure that these rules are only partially applicable in Thailand. They depend on at least some of the organic content of the soil still being available one and two years later. They won't.
The only "rotation" of crop's that I do involves the avoidance of planting certain vegetables that just don't work in my particular case. Tomatoes for instance.


Sent from my iris88_go using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app
 

The idea was to give complete and utter novices a very basic introduction to the concept of rotating crops/veggies. For some odd reason I instinctively knew to rotate my vegetables when I started a few years ago. Other may not know this. 

I have noticed some improvement in our little backyard grow beds over the past 4 or 5 years. Thanks to added organic matter and rotating the vegetables, the soil not only looks better but it actually seems easier to grow plants in them. 

Maybe somebody here'll find it useful, if not, the thread can be deleted. No harm done. 

Happy gardening. 

 

 

[MikeN]

14 hours ago, djayz said:

I've quite often though about that as well. I see the same fields being planted with crop of cassava after crop of cassava, year after year. The only thing they seem to do to the land is add chicken manure. I just assumed that cassava is more disease tolerant that other crops... 

 

They add chicken manure, and litre  after  litre of chemicals in the form of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

 From my experience with the GF’s family, Thai farmers have no concept of crop rotation let alone “wasting” an area of farmland by leaving it fallow for a year.

 The family farm has a small but reliable water source all year, not enough for a second rice crop but adequate enough to diversify into vegetables on a small-medium scale for some extra cash flow after the rice is harvested or as an alternative rotation crop.

 Are they interested ? No. The youngest brother was, but as the junior of the family he was outvoted and ended up moving to Chiang Rai to set up his own diversified farm.

 As an aside, the oldest brother and all 3 of the sisters husbands who worked with the chemicals out in the fields all died before they reached 60. I cannot help thinking that less chemicals and more crop rotation/diversification would give healthier soil, crops, and farmers.

[kickstart]

When I worked on farms in the UK, one farm grew oilseed rape,  wheat, barley, potatoes, and sugar beet.

easy to do a rotation, the other farm grew wheat, barley, rye, oilseed rape, field beans, and a field of short term lay grass cut for silage, again easy to plan a rotation.

Meanwhile here in LOS, it is rice, maize, cassava, and sugar cane, all crops that we use to call exhortative crops, take more out of the land than they put in, in the way of nutrients,  because that is what the  Thai market wants, and these crops the amount grown depends on market prices ,some mung beans are grown a legume crop ,we use to grow  mung beans after maize ,and the next crop of maize seemed to do well ,more mung beans are grown around here  now as the crop is now combined, as before it was picked by hand,but not enough are grown to make regular crop rotation. 

But I can not see a cropping rotation here in Thailand, farmers look at what price they get for they crop, rotations are way down the list.

As for fallowing a field, can not see it ,that would be losing a years income ,I would say it would cost them money, haveing the problem of weed control a year of no cropping would bring ,that would push up the costs ,or the Thai way burn all the grass weeds in the dry season ,say no more ,and a lot of farmers rent land ,would they rent the land and do nothing with it ?

The old EU set aside scheme, where the EU paid farmers not farm some of their lands, at the time they were a lot of overproduction, a way to limit production .it worked and soil fertility .did increase, so did a lot of wildlife and birds. 

The Thai farmers would like that getting paid for doing nothing