All the talk about soil reminds me of the book "Teaming with Microbes"; one of the best books and it really opened my eyes to the importance of having healthy rich soil.
I was a teenager when my dad retired from the Air Force and took up farming 200 acres. This was my first exposure to the home garden. I was taught to plant in rows and use lots of fertilizer, just like Dad was doing on a large scale. There was lots of hoeing and weeding causing me to lose interest. The next time I gardened I was in my mid-twenties. I felt reborn when I purchased the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (copyright 1978). I have gardened on and off throughout the years and I agree it is overwhelming. However, now that I am in my early 60s and retired I appreciate that there are RUclipsrs like Scott and Tony who allow me to search a specific question and all I need to do is watch a ten minute video to get the answer. This alleviates the frustration of gardening! I’m also grateful that you two are passionate about helping others learn to become better gardeners. Thank you Scott and Tony for teaming up and reminding us that we don’t have to practice traditional row farming and annual rotation of beds - instead pay attention to what is happening to plants and soil.
So true on RUclipsrs for putting out their information and wanting to teach on the subject of gardening 😉☺️. It can be hard and over powering in the beginning. But u got to take baby steps and find your way of doing it. Thanks 😊👍 guy and for u sharing.
I just saw your reply. I began my gardening career in earnest around 1980 or so and indeed my goto was my copy of the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. Taught me a lot. Tried lots of stuff in that book. Over time though it became apparent that if I wanted REAL success the old ways were best. Straight row gardening, lots of leaves in the garden as a soil amendment and the wise use of lime and 13-13-13 fertilizer. Organic gardening seems like it ought to work...but it's a fools errand for experimenters only.
Thanks for the video Scott and Tony. Something you said Scott was "Mother Nature does not leave her earth uncovered" that should get gardeners to think more about feeding the soil. I have! Steve
Great video... AGAIN! What I have learned is that compost is crop rotation. Building the soil in the off season by adding compost and mulching allows me to grow successfully without much, if any, fertilizer. This is the difference between gardening and farming. Thank you both!!
A gal was so upset with me when she heard I grew my tomatoes in the same place every year. I also plant companion plants within them. But because of blight she freaked out. I tried to explain that it takes 3 factors to be happening for blight to happen. Blight is in the soil, doesn't matter where I plant my tomatoes. If the conditions are right you will most like get blight
Wow! So amazing I was thinking of this last night! And this came up 👍 I have always been about THE SOIL! I so agree with you. And was wondering about that. You make good points as I am not farming. I have more control over my raised beds. Something interesting I was reading in Leviticus that got me thinking of this last night. The Israelies every 7 years would let the land rest. No pruning, tilling, planting etc. Some still do this. But realize this was for huge fields as well. I’m a gardner not a farmer. thanks for the great vid! Composting and layering are things I do. The soil is the most important thing. Thanks Gardner Scott. 👍
I love this subject. I choose to have a smaller more densely packed garden. It has a variety of lighting that forces me to plant certain things in the same location or area. I have always felt that soil development is more important than crop rotation. I was great to hear this discussion confirming this.
I love that the two of you have gotten together to produce such great videos. I enjoyed them both. Crop rotation has been a thorn in my side for years. Being the youngest sibling, I have had to listen to the others tell me that I have to rotate my crops or else. The information came from older generations of large-scale, single crop farmers. There were lots of them in my family. But, I could never get my brain to understand the mechanisms of crop rotation. It was such a relief the first time I heard one of my RUclipsrs say it's not necessary. Thank you soooooo much for backing it up with sensible explanations. I love you both and am so glad to have found your channels when I did. Keep up the great work. Blessed be.
Thanks for the video. Some aspects of gardening seems complex and overwhelming for new gardeners. You have have helped clarify and simplify so beginners could be encouraged to enjoy their gardening. I have a similar philosophy about improving soil . So much so that I sometimes introduce myself as a "soil farmer" rather than a gardener so people think differently about soil.
What a great idea to help people focus on their soil Jay! I wish I had that understanding years ago. Even though I believed and practiced organic gardening, I didn’t have an understanding of soil. Keep sharing your knowledge! Looking forward to hearing from you on Monday!
This is so helpful. Every spring I pull out my hair, trying to figure out where to place my plants. I have a 40 x 80 in ground garden and we use ground cloth. Pulling that up, plus the trellises and t-posts becomes a daunting task. It is a challenge to amend the soil under that ground cover through the small holes we have for our plants. I always enjoy your videos.
Thank you both for this wonderful and informative video. I have been gardening in the same space for over 30 years. In the beginning I would plan the garden to have a rotation each season. After a few years, I stopped rotating because I found where the plants grow best. Now, my rotation is what variety of seeds/plants I will plant each year. I am also one to experiment with something new and that adds to my yearly excitement of planning the garden. Keeping notes of what grew where year after year really helps with planning.
This was great timing. I first saw this talked about on the MIgardner channel and then watched this video. I’m only my second season of growing vegetables and I was already thinking about how I was going to have to move things around next year. This all made sense to me so thanks for saving me the trouble!
Thank you both for your good advice and thanks for introducing me to a new interesting garden chanel! 😊 I would say tomatoes are really a bad example for crop rotation because they do love to grow on the same place every year and get better and better there. Tomatoes love their own leafs as mulch, too. So i collect the leafs seperated and use them as mulch just for them. I guess the 2 main reasons for crop rotation are a lack of the special nutrition combination for one special very hungry plant like brassica or squash. 2nd is the pest problem, when they leave their eggs in the ground. Both problems you can handle with good soil food like compost and mulch and also mixed cultures: i combine for instance peas and beans with cucumbers, squash or brassicas; onions with carrots so they keep the flys/gnats away from each other - herbs and flowers like basil, nasturtium or marigold can keep the pests away from the crops. That works pretty well. When you mix up the crops so you always have a couple of places where you grow one special crop. If there should be trouble with a pest it normally hits only a couple of plants but not the whole places on the same time. So you can always react right in time. I love to have my morning coffee or tea outside while i say hello to my little balcony garden and check all the plants. It's always great to find some new flowers or fruits, see them growing and see the problems coming soon. Last year i had a high bed with a mixture of nasturtium, beetroot, zucchini, peas, carrots, dill, cucumbers, and some little radish spread everywhere. It worked and the aphids only touched the nasturtium where i could collect them. I like to use coffee grounds, egg shell powder, nettle tea and banana tea to feed my plants in between. The soil gets compost and mulch and biochar to grow. I agree with you: Soil is the key for healthy plants and a good harvest. 😊
Thank you both for putting this out there! I live in a rented townhouse, and I only have a 1x7 and a 4x3 in ground plot to garden in (not including anywhere I can fit containers). When I came across the concept of crop rotation online, I felt pretty overwhelmed. I had no idea how I was supposed to crop rotate in two tiny garden beds. I think following the advice you, Tony's, and other master gardeners I've heard mention this, I'm going to forgo crop rotation and rely on keeping my soil healthy and companion planting. Crop rotation might be a fun challenge to try when I have the space, but it's not practical for me now.
Very informative video! Over the years I have learned to develop better soil quality, and to be flexible when serious problems show up. You never stop learning when it comes to gardening.
Hope you and Tony do this type of collaboration more in the future. I also have been an avid viewer of Tony's channel over the last couple of years as well. Loved the collab and I also haven't been a proponent of crop rotation in my 50 plus years of organic gardening. Love the video. Haffy in Aurora
This topic takes gardening right back where it belongs. I will be adding companion planting, crop pest traps and practice successive planting of crops that leave behind nutrients for the next crop planted. All this along with fall amendment and ensuring that beds are covered, I believe gives our gardens a well rounded health and a preparatory state for the next season. All these discussions gives all gardeners newbies or long time food growers new hope and enthusiasm for building healthier more abundant veggie gardens!!! Thanks for the tips!!!!!👍🏻
Been gardening for 35 years. Discovered both of you this year and have learned so much! Best garden year ever and I have my first fall garden producing beautifully in zone 6. Thank you!
That was so enjoyable to watch (great color coordination backgrounds) and hear two experts talk on the same point. I learned why large scale farming where they can't put down enough organic material to feed the soil, causes depletion of nutrients and thus pests take over and then chemicals are used to eradicate them and synthetic fertilizers are used. We are blessed to plant small scale as Tony said! You and him did great!
Awesome Video! New Subscriber here. Having grown potatoes cabbages onions garlic beetroots and many plants for my bees! I have never ever done crop rotation and have never had a problem! i only heard about crop rotation on a TV programe many years ago and wondered what on earth they where on about. Same with our allotments! been growing tomatoes peppers pumpkins in the same soil for over 30 years. Only adition is we add fresh compost to the top of the ground where they grow.
Scott this was great! I've been struggling with crop rotation theory for a while now. For example, I have a few crops that grow very tall that want to keep on the north or northwest side of my garden every year. Or potato beds that I like to keep more acidic along with utilizing the volunteer potatoes that I always miss each year while harvesting. It's no problem rotating most things but it's good to know it's not absolutely necessary. BTW sorry to hear about that crazy early freeze last month. We have had some early freezes here on the east coast in recent years that cut my season short by a few weeks but nothing as early as you got.
Although I had difficulty digesting some of Tony's British accent/vocabulary (almost a foreign language to me), it was refreshing that U highlighted his points without interrupting as unfortunately or fortunately us Canucks are tuned into the US bandwidth dialogue and definitely not the British or BBC one: thanx for interpreting Tony's jargon for us homesteaders who have no time to waste without comprehension. BTW: IMHO - annual crop rotation is a joke in a well composted healthy home garden.
Crop rotation - the single most problematic practice for me over my years of gardening. Following a well known local (to NZ) gardeners advice I tried to follow her complex home garden rotation for years and always found it difficult to put into operation, leaving a lot of wasted space in my home garden and much frustration. During our lockdown earlier this year I began watching gardening videos on You Tube and with great joy have abandoned this formal crop rotation, to follow the advice of gardeners such as both of you (and Charles Dowding in the UK). Great video, summarizing and clarifying this gardening subject.
Wonderful collaboration, execution and topic, thank you so much for sharing! I've always heard about crop rotation and wondered how that works when you're growing a lot of different plants. One of my raised beds this year had bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, a basil plant, one broccoli, mustard greens, carrots, beets, and most recently radishes. At the same time my bed with two Kuri squash, a watermelon and cantaloupe plant was ravaged by squash borer. After that issue I planted green beans and pak Choy, kale, beets, and turnips (all small amounts). What I do for sure know is that next year I probably shouldn't plant squash and the like in that bed because of the borer. But I appreciate understanding that I can still plant tomatoes where I already planted tomatoes. Thanks for spreading the word much like the Kiss the Ground documentary.
Great idea getting together for this video. I have been subscribed to both of you guys' channels for over a year since I retired and have gleaned lots of great advice from both of you. Previous to retirement I only grew tomatoes and basil, since retirement and with your helpful advice I have "branched out" into many other edibles.Thanks to both of you for the encouragement.
I have raised beds that are stationary. I have several cattle panels on T-posts that I won't move. I just assumed I would be doing it wrong, but was just going to take that hit. Glad to hear I don't have to move things around.
Hi, Found you on Tony’s channel, enjoyed the talk and the chance to find out about your channel. You’ve got some cool looking videos that I’m looking forward to watching 😊
My garden has one dug bed of silty clay loam, heavy on the clay, amended with compost and used potting mix. It's in the sunniest spot, so I'll still grow squash in it every year. The early morning sun that the rest of my garden doesn't get is good for minimizing powdery mildew. My garlic and potatoes are rotated as I put in new no-dig beds with last year's potting mix and compost. I think it might help avoid diseases, but mostly it's a matter of convenience. New potting mix in my containers grow eggplant, peppers, carrots and celery, while root vegetables grow in these new beds. All of it is amended with compost, so I'm not worried about nutrient deficiencies.
I like to rotate some crops. Like I move the summer squash around just to try and stay ahead of the squash bugs. I tend to keep them in a raised bed that's kinda isolated from the others.
Thanks for this video and I have watched Tony from Simplifying Gardening on the same subject and Huw Richard (another UK based gardener) did a video explaining that crop rotation is a waste of time and that he doesn't practice crop rotation himself. It sounds like crop rotation isn't necessary for gardening but is for farmers. Since i am not a farmer I won't be doing crop rotation.
Thank You for having this discussion. I have never really practiced successive gardening.I have made a decision to try it. Where I live our garden irrigation gets shut off in early October. That makes watering a little more difficult. But I am still going to try it. There is certainly more than one reason. plants are having trouble.
love the idea that succession planting is a type of crop rotation. i've watched both videos and hope to see more of this style with you both or from you both with others. this is surely the best on youtube, IMHO!!!
Wow. thanks. We worked hard setting this up and the idea was to make it different from other collaborations. I for one am glad it came across that way :)
There is a great you tube video about how we changeing the farmers to do cover crops. It is listed as " USDA NRCS: Under Cover Farmers, Feature Length.
Tony & Scott, perfect timing for this vid! With everything going on in the world today, people are seeing the food shortages and are reacting. Try to find canning jars, lids, & seals...nonexistent!!! I always read to never plant tomatoes in the same bed every year because of wilt, but one site I follow says he plants tomatoes in the same area every year with no issues. I like the advice of cover crops. Might be too late for me here in PA, zone 6, not sure, I'll research. If I could find a way to grow toilet paper, I'll be set...LOL (subbing Tony's channel)
When we planted out the strawberries from the window, we threw in a few other types of seeds with them. The garden cress grew the fastest, and is the only brassica that I would put with low growing plants as all the other brassicas overrun the garden beds they are in. Even so, we still had to pull out most of the garden cress to keep the strawberries in full sun, as they need to establish themselves. Things like onions and carrots should do better with the strawberries, and the better we can interplant with them the more of each plant we will have growing in the garden, and the more resilient the garden will be, as well as each type of plant, as the ones that do better in various adverse conditions can support the ones that do badly in those conditions, usually in summer, when there is plenty more sun than any one plant can handle. Overall, rotation becomes silly when plants are allowed to grow as long as they were designed to, and a lot of the garden plants we treat as annuals can survive a mid-continent winter, and become the first plants to come back in the spring~
We keep ending up with tons of radish seed, and the plants from them grow all sorts of different ways, so we're going to try using radishes as a cover, to use what's on hand~
I follow both of you, and I'm geeking out over your collaboration. I agree that crop rotation isn't necessary. Those of us with small plots are limited to where to plant anyway. I plant my plants where I plant them because it meets their needs as far as sunlight goes. Also, side question. What are your thoughts about using mulching materials in your beds that are inoculated with beneficial fungi? Even in your path ways. Incorporate edible mushrooms into your beds to control bad fungus.
Thanks. I think using fungal sources is great for the garden. I use a lot of wood chips and leaves to incorporate them into my soil. I haven't added edible mushrooms, but they can be a nice option.
I have a small home garden. Because i dont like to repeat work, i xhose companion planting and mostly perennial plants. I do have a few annual beds,though
Thank you so much for this video. I watch both you and Tony’s channel and am learning so much. My little garden is small so I have a small 10 x4 raised bed I grow my green beans, bell pepper, eggplant, and assorted other veggies and 6, 5 gallon buckets that I grow tomatoes in. Each year I am end the soil in both but was just wondering if I could reuse the old soil in the buckets if I amend them. Love y’all’s channel.🍁👩🌾
This is a great video guys!!! I ask people when they tell me not to do companion planting. How is it that multiple species of plants and trees are able to coexist in the woods and Forrest and all still thrive in the same ecosystem? There is no one out there feeding,watering, fertilizing, rotating and so on! I don’t get it! I companion plant all the time and have no problems. Plants know what they need out the soil. With all the other plants and trees out there with them dropping leaves for natural compost. More than enough nutrients for all to coexist. Organic Fertilizer will always be there as long as leaves are dropping and decomposing releasing vital nutrients and minerals to all that require it.
Good morning Gardener Scott. Thank you for this video. My question is, should we rotate onions and garlic? I’ve read that garlic should be rotated every 3 years. Will you clear this up for me? Thanks again.
I don't crop rotate in my garden for the most part. My tomatoes go where they were the year before. I amend the soil enough not to worry about it and I have never really had a soil born disease. The rest of my plants go wherever I want them each year. Tomatoes stay because of how I stake them. I have great crops, always have. I guess I should say I pull the plants at the end of the season, laver a layer of leaves and grass and cover it with cardboard. By the spring the worms have eaten everything and I am good to go the next year. Works for me.
I have been using the same 60x100 plot of ground for over 40 years. In that time I have pretty well seen what likes what. It is a fact in my garden that my squash likes a certain portion. Period. Year after year. Dittos cabbages and some other things. Corn...rotate or don't rotate. It does splendidly. I never really gave the crop rotation thing much thought. I just did it. The ONLY thing in my garden that MUST be rotated is tomatoes. Those rows get planted in a different place each year. If not rotated, you get diminishing returns. That's just the way it is. For that chore I use wire strung on 8ft landscape timbers. I have to 'build' the dang row structure anew each year in a different space. A pain....but I have gosh awesome yields.
James I was in my Studio. We took a photo of it and then Scott put it through greenscreen in order to keep it looking clean and better on the eyes for you guys who were viewing.
Great video Gardener Scott. It seems that you and Tony are cut from the same cloth, and not just because you’re planting the same cover crop! I’ve learnt so much more in this last year from watching both yours’ and Tony’s videos than in the last 20 years of gardening. It’s my first year mulching and growing cold season crops. When I was planting my spring cabbages, the instructions said not to grow In a bed where spring cabbages have been grown within the last year. It didn’t apply to me, but on the basis of your discussion can this advice be ignored? Best wishes Roy from London, UK
Thanks. Spring cabbages can be susceptible to pests that lay eggs or have larvae in soil and that's where the advice comes from. I like to add compost to my spring beds and that's usually enough to disrupt the life cycle of pests like that. As long as you watch for pests and understand their growth you can plant in the same bed.
I thought crop rotation would not be necessary as long as I did the same thing the Native folks back east during the Pilgrim Era did. If you grow corn on a patch, harvest the cob and drop the cornstalks back onto the patch. The nutrients taken up by the corn will be put back into the soil. Chop and drop.
I'm not sure what you mean because I was inside talking with Tony for the whole video. If you're referring to another video please comment on that one.
I'd always heard that you shouldn't plant solanaceae in the same space where you had some the previous season, because of pernicious nematode population building up. So you should avoid, say tomatoes where you had peppers or potatoes, etc. But, as you two say, one doesn't do monoculture and keeps renewing the topsoil, so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll check out Tony's channel too.
Add organic matter. Adding clay won't improve the the soil and it would take a very large amount to modify sandy soil. Organic matter can do it quicker and better.
Great video Scott and Tony, I've been watching both your videos for last couple years for sure. I have a question I hope you can answer. I live in North West Ontario so our winters are very cold and long. Can I use fresh cut grass as a mulch and then turn it in the soil then next spring or would I have to rake it off and reapply it after I plant new stuff in the spring. Here we have frost sometimes to middle of June like last year and early in September often. I'm pretty sure it is good or OK to use grass as mulch on top but is it ok to turn in the soil also? Thank you for your reply if you reply and thank you for you videos.
Thanks, Frank. You can, but I prefer to turn fresh grass into the soil in autumn as an amendment. For a short growing season, turning it into soil in late spring may not provide enough time for it to decompose. In my region the winter winds would blow it away as a mulch. I blend dry grass and crushed leaves as a mulch over winter; it is more likely to stay in place.
@@GardenerScott thankyou for your answer. I did put lots of crushed leaves on top of garden last fall, not even sure how much of that decomposed. I did plant potatoes in that hugel culture bed and just yesterday put thin layer of fresh cut grass on top as mulch. So what you're saying I think I could even add a little more grass clippings over the summer, then turn it in the fall and put mulched leaves on top for winter and that should be good, I hope.
It is really hard to do crop rotation when you have a small garden or only one bed. Adding organic matter is important. It is fine to grow plants in the same place year after year if they do well. However, sometimes, the plants are not in the best place. If they don't grow well then maybe you have the wrong choice of cultivar or the wrong plant for your location. Some diseases become so pervasive that it makes that crop impossible to grow well. I can't grow sweet basil anymore because of basil downy mildew. Some crops do have to rotate out. If the problem with the soil is nematodes, then only nematode resistant crops will work. Crops that cannot tolerate nematodes have to go into pots or in clean soil. I do believe in crop succession. Different crops use nutrients in different amounts. I do follow heavy feeder crops with nutrient scavengers, so I rotate plants in time.
I was rotating my turnips/beets with onions/lettuce to fight the white butterfly from Hell: never worked (I use the decoy method now with nearly 100% success, btw) About powdery mildew and better locations... I thought the birds in my garden were spreading most of the WPM and other soil born diseases but I investigated this year and found nearby trees have been shedding diseased leaves. Two to three days after a nasty-leaf is found on a tomato branch, the exact location rotted away. I'm moving all my tomatoes far away from the sick trees.
An amateur gardening neighbour has #RootRot (Plasmodiophora brassicae) in his garden and regrets not rotating. That protozoan can even survive in soil algae and weeds from the Cruciferae family and it is hard to get rid of the desease.
There are some farmers in north central Indiana who live near large poultry farms. They do have enough organic matter to add to these fields and they grow some really good crops on large fields. I don’t have pictures but the farmers who live in Fulton and Northern Miami counties do so much better than say in Howard and Tipton counties that rely more on chemicals.
I dont do crop rotaion, other than that if one crop goes out i make sure to put in another crop, so potatoes out, leek goes in.. I also do interplanting. Plants basically all use the same nutrients so it just serves no purpose. Weed don't rotate and they seem to do great year after year in the same spot. I just make sure i add manure and compost.
Is there any truth that different plants take in nutrients at different ratio's? I know that osmotic processes are going on so it could be possible but it doesn't seem necessarily true.
Yes, different plants will absorb different nutrients at different rates. Some plants are referred to as "heavy feeders" because the require more nitrogen. Generally, leafy plants will use more nitrogen and flowering plants will use more phosphorus.
Check out the companion video to this one on the Simplify Gardening channel: ruclips.net/video/iS0ELo626fE/видео.html
Scott I absolutely loved having this conversation with you. I hope your audience enjoys the topic and get some value from it.
All the talk about soil reminds me of the book "Teaming with Microbes"; one of the best books and it really opened my eyes to the importance of having healthy rich soil.
@Denise Miller: I also really enjoyed this convo - very informative. Thank you for the book recommendation, I’m adding it to my garden books wishlist.
I was a teenager when my dad retired from the Air Force and took up farming 200 acres. This was my first exposure to the home garden. I was taught to plant in rows and use lots of fertilizer, just like Dad was doing on a large scale. There was lots of hoeing and weeding causing me to lose interest. The next time I gardened I was in my mid-twenties. I felt reborn when I purchased the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (copyright 1978). I have gardened on and off throughout the years and I agree it is overwhelming. However, now that I am in my early 60s and retired I appreciate that there are RUclipsrs like Scott and Tony who allow me to search a specific question and all I need to do is watch a ten minute video to get the answer. This alleviates the frustration of gardening! I’m also grateful that you two are passionate about helping others learn to become better gardeners. Thank you Scott and Tony for teaming up and reminding us that we don’t have to practice traditional row farming and annual rotation of beds - instead pay attention to what is happening to plants and soil.
Thanks Lynda I am glad you found interest in the video. The traditional way put off so many people all because of the weeds.
Thanks, Lynda. You're doing it right.
OMG my two favorite gardeners in the same video?! I’m freaking out
So true on RUclipsrs for putting out their information and wanting to teach on the subject of gardening 😉☺️. It can be hard and over powering in the beginning. But u got to take baby steps and find your way of doing it. Thanks 😊👍 guy and for u sharing.
I just saw your reply. I began my gardening career in earnest around 1980 or so and indeed my goto was my copy of the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. Taught me a lot. Tried lots of stuff in that book. Over time though it became apparent that if I wanted REAL success the old ways were best. Straight row gardening, lots of leaves in the garden as a soil amendment and the wise use of lime and 13-13-13 fertilizer. Organic gardening seems like it ought to work...but it's a fools errand for experimenters only.
Thanks for the video Scott and Tony. Something you said Scott was "Mother Nature does not leave her earth uncovered" that should get gardeners to think more about feeding the soil. I have! Steve
It was a great comment, noteworthy.
Scott I am a 13 generation farmer-retired. I so enjoy your talks. I learn every time. Thank you so much!
Great video... AGAIN! What I have learned is that compost is crop rotation. Building the soil in the off season by adding compost and mulching allows me to grow successfully without much, if any, fertilizer.
This is the difference between gardening and farming.
Thank you both!!
Eeeep ! Two of my favourite gardeners in the same space !
I subscribe to you both, you are my "go to" garden guys! I think I have learned more from you both than I have learned from all the rest combined!
Thanks Sean :)
My 2 favorite gardening channels working together. Love it
A gal was so upset with me when she heard I grew my tomatoes in the same place every year. I also plant companion plants within them. But because of blight she freaked out. I tried to explain that it takes 3 factors to be happening for blight to happen. Blight is in the soil, doesn't matter where I plant my tomatoes. If the conditions are right you will most like get blight
Wow! So amazing I was thinking of this last night! And this came up 👍 I have always been about THE SOIL! I so agree with you. And was wondering about that. You make good points as I am not farming. I have more control over my raised beds. Something interesting I was reading in Leviticus that got me thinking of this last night. The Israelies every 7 years would let the land rest. No pruning, tilling, planting etc. Some still do this. But realize this was for huge fields as well. I’m a gardner not a farmer. thanks for the great vid! Composting and layering are things I do. The soil is the most important thing. Thanks Gardner Scott. 👍
Two of my top 5 you tubers together ! Wow awesome and a big dilemma answered!! Thank you both!!
You are my two favorite u tube gardeners. Thanks for this!
OMG my two favorite gardeners in the same video!?! I’m freaking out! This was so awesome and informative, thank you!
Thanks, Glad you enjoyed this video :)
I love this subject. I choose to have a smaller more densely packed garden. It has a variety of lighting that forces me to plant certain things in the same location or area. I have always felt that soil development is more important than crop rotation. I was great to hear this discussion confirming this.
"Kiss the ground" is a fantastic documentation about healthy soil. I can really recommend it for a better understanding of this topic.
I agree. It's a good film.
Some of the large farms are now doing cover crops to feed the soil and microbes here in the US.
That's great news!
I love that the two of you have gotten together to produce such great videos. I enjoyed them both.
Crop rotation has been a thorn in my side for years. Being the youngest sibling, I have had to listen to the others tell me that I have to rotate my crops or else. The information came from older generations of large-scale, single crop farmers. There were lots of them in my family. But, I could never get my brain to understand the mechanisms of crop rotation. It was such a relief the first time I heard one of my RUclipsrs say it's not necessary. Thank you soooooo much for backing it up with sensible explanations.
I love you both and am so glad to have found your channels when I did.
Keep up the great work. Blessed be.
Great video of two of my most watched and admired RUclips gardeners.
Thanks Gardener Scott and Tony.
Thanks for the video. Some aspects of gardening seems complex and overwhelming for new gardeners. You have have helped clarify and simplify so beginners could be encouraged to enjoy their gardening.
I have a similar philosophy about improving soil . So much so that I sometimes introduce myself as a "soil farmer" rather than a gardener so people think differently about soil.
What a great idea to help people focus on their soil Jay! I wish I had that understanding years ago. Even though I believed and practiced organic gardening, I didn’t have an understanding of soil. Keep sharing your knowledge! Looking forward to hearing from you on Monday!
Good idea to say soil farmer!
How much dirt would a dirt herder herd if a dirt herder never heard of dirt?
This is so helpful. Every spring I pull out my hair, trying to figure out where to place my plants. I have a 40 x 80 in ground garden and we use ground cloth. Pulling that up, plus the trellises and t-posts becomes a daunting task. It is a challenge to amend the soil under that ground cover through the small holes we have for our plants. I always enjoy your videos.
Great info tony sent me here👌
Awesome! Thank you!
Thank you both for this wonderful and informative video. I have been gardening in the same space for over 30 years. In the beginning I would plan the garden to have a rotation each season. After a few years, I stopped rotating because I found where the plants grow best. Now, my rotation is what variety of seeds/plants I will plant each year. I am also one to experiment with something new and that adds to my yearly excitement of planning the garden. Keeping notes of what grew where year after year really helps with planning.
Thanks for helping us show how real gardeners really grow.
Perfect Lar and its the way it should be done
This was great timing. I first saw this talked about on the MIgardner channel and then watched this video. I’m only my second season of growing vegetables and I was already thinking about how I was going to have to move things around next year. This all made sense to me so thanks for saving me the trouble!
That`s was great, the ideea of puting you together into a conversation like this, helps a lot !!!! Thank you both so much !
Two great youtube gardening guys that I follow and appreciate
WOW A great video from two of my favourite gardeners I enjoyed it so much.
would love more discussion videos in the future :)
Glad you enjoyed it Alexander :) we will see what we can do :)
Thanks, Alexander. We've already discussed that possibility.
Thank you both for your good advice and thanks for introducing me to a new interesting garden chanel! 😊
I would say tomatoes are really a bad example for crop rotation because they do love to grow on the same place every year and get better and better there. Tomatoes love their own leafs as mulch, too. So i collect the leafs seperated and use them as mulch just for them.
I guess the 2 main reasons for crop rotation are a lack of the special nutrition combination for one special very hungry plant like brassica or squash. 2nd is the pest problem, when they leave their eggs in the ground.
Both problems you can handle with good soil food like compost and mulch and also mixed cultures: i combine for instance peas and beans with cucumbers, squash or brassicas; onions with carrots so they keep the flys/gnats away from each other - herbs and flowers like basil, nasturtium or marigold can keep the pests away from the crops. That works pretty well. When you mix up the crops so you always have a couple of places where you grow one special crop. If there should be trouble with a pest it normally hits only a couple of plants but not the whole places on the same time. So you can always react right in time.
I love to have my morning coffee or tea outside while i say hello to my little balcony garden and check all the plants. It's always great to find some new flowers or fruits, see them growing and see the problems coming soon.
Last year i had a high bed with a mixture of nasturtium, beetroot, zucchini, peas, carrots, dill, cucumbers, and some little radish spread everywhere. It worked and the aphids only touched the nasturtium where i could collect them. I like to use coffee grounds, egg shell powder, nettle tea and banana tea to feed my plants in between. The soil gets compost and mulch and biochar to grow.
I agree with you: Soil is the key for healthy plants and a good harvest. 😊
I watched it and it was awesome....I am relieved! 2021 hope will be easier! All the best from NY!
Great discussion from my 2 favorite gardeners that has cleared up things for me. Thanks so much 😊
Thank you both for putting this out there! I live in a rented townhouse, and I only have a 1x7 and a 4x3 in ground plot to garden in (not including anywhere I can fit containers). When I came across the concept of crop rotation online, I felt pretty overwhelmed. I had no idea how I was supposed to crop rotate in two tiny garden beds. I think following the advice you, Tony's, and other master gardeners I've heard mention this, I'm going to forgo crop rotation and rely on keeping my soil healthy and companion planting. Crop rotation might be a fun challenge to try when I have the space, but it's not practical for me now.
Very informative video! Over the years I have learned to develop better soil quality, and to be flexible when serious problems show up. You never stop learning when it comes to gardening.
I never thought about actually doing crop rotation at my home garden because I've never had big issues. This was very interesting. Thank you!
I think you two should do a live Q&A!
Maybe that could be something for the future
No!No! Now! Now! 😭😭😭 just kidding! You guys are doing a great job! You guys are my top go to for home gardening info. Thanks you.
Great suggestion. Thanks!
Hope you and Tony do this type of collaboration more in the future. I also have been an avid viewer of Tony's channel over the last couple of years as well. Loved the collab and I also haven't been a proponent of crop rotation in my 50 plus years of organic gardening. Love the video. Haffy in Aurora
This topic takes gardening right back where it belongs. I will be adding companion planting, crop pest traps and practice successive planting of crops that leave behind nutrients for the next crop planted. All this along with fall amendment and ensuring that beds are covered, I believe gives our gardens a well rounded health and a preparatory state for the next season. All these discussions gives all gardeners newbies or long time food growers new hope and enthusiasm for building healthier more abundant veggie gardens!!!
Thanks for the tips!!!!!👍🏻
Been gardening for 35 years. Discovered both of you this year and have learned so much! Best garden year ever and I have my first fall garden producing beautifully in zone 6. Thank you!
Great info guys
This is what I've been thinking. Thanks for the validation😃
You both are great teachers,
Sir & SIR I have a lot of respect for you teachers
Thanks
Wonderful dialogue between two master gardeners! Thank you both.
Love both Gardener Scott and Tony! I follow both of you and having you both together was absolutely wonderful. 👏❤️👏❤️
I follow both of you guys . Always great advice from both
This is a video with a great and educatinoal content. I do really like it!
That was so enjoyable to watch (great color coordination backgrounds) and hear two experts talk on the same point. I learned why large scale farming where they can't put down enough organic material to feed the soil, causes depletion of nutrients and thus pests take over and then chemicals are used to eradicate them and synthetic fertilizers are used. We are blessed to plant small scale as Tony said! You and him did great!
Great video thanks again. Teaching gardeners
Crop rotation is great to do cause there r some plants that add to the soil. But that is a 3 year plan. To find a place for them.
Amazing you both have the same background wall in different countries!
The magic of green screen.
Thank you Scott, for having this conversation with Tony. I also follow his channel and advises and learn a lot from both of you.
Woohoooo! I couldn't figure out how I was going to crop rotate. Now, ahhh, don't have to worry about it. Thank you!
Excellent video. Thanks.
Awesome Video! New Subscriber here. Having grown potatoes cabbages onions garlic beetroots and many plants for my bees! I have never ever done crop rotation and have never had a problem! i only heard about crop rotation on a TV programe many years ago and wondered what on earth they where on about. Same with our allotments! been growing tomatoes peppers pumpkins in the same soil for over 30 years. Only adition is we add fresh compost to the top of the ground where they grow.
Scott this was great! I've been struggling with crop rotation theory for a while now. For example, I have a few crops that grow very tall that want to keep on the north or northwest side of my garden every year. Or potato beds that I like to keep more acidic along with utilizing the volunteer potatoes that I always miss each year while harvesting. It's no problem rotating most things but it's good to know it's not absolutely necessary.
BTW sorry to hear about that crazy early freeze last month. We have had some early freezes here on the east coast in recent years that cut my season short by a few weeks but nothing as early as you got.
Although I had difficulty digesting some of Tony's British accent/vocabulary (almost a foreign language to me), it was refreshing that U highlighted his points without interrupting as unfortunately or fortunately us Canucks are tuned into the US bandwidth dialogue and definitely not the British or BBC one: thanx for interpreting Tony's jargon for us homesteaders who have no time to waste without comprehension. BTW: IMHO - annual crop rotation is a joke in a well composted healthy home garden.
Crop rotation - the single most problematic practice for me over my years of gardening. Following a well known local (to NZ) gardeners advice I tried to follow her complex home garden rotation for years and always found it difficult to put into operation, leaving a lot of wasted space in my home garden and much frustration. During our lockdown earlier this year I began watching gardening videos on You Tube and with great joy have abandoned this formal crop rotation, to follow the advice of gardeners such as both of you (and Charles Dowding in the UK). Great video, summarizing and clarifying this gardening subject.
Wonderful collaboration, execution and topic, thank you so much for sharing! I've always heard about crop rotation and wondered how that works when you're growing a lot of different plants. One of my raised beds this year had bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, a basil plant, one broccoli, mustard greens, carrots, beets, and most recently radishes. At the same time my bed with two Kuri squash, a watermelon and cantaloupe plant was ravaged by squash borer. After that issue I planted green beans and pak Choy, kale, beets, and turnips (all small amounts). What I do for sure know is that next year I probably shouldn't plant squash and the like in that bed because of the borer. But I appreciate understanding that I can still plant tomatoes where I already planted tomatoes. Thanks for spreading the word much like the Kiss the Ground documentary.
Great idea getting together for this video. I have been subscribed to both of you guys' channels for over a year since I retired and have gleaned lots of great advice from both of you. Previous to retirement I only grew tomatoes and basil, since retirement and with your helpful advice I have "branched out" into many other edibles.Thanks to both of you for the encouragement.
I have raised beds that are stationary. I have several cattle panels on T-posts that I won't move. I just assumed I would be doing it wrong, but was just going to take that hit. Glad to hear I don't have to move things around.
Hi, Found you on Tony’s channel, enjoyed the talk and the chance to find out about your channel. You’ve got some cool looking videos that I’m looking forward to watching 😊
I like this... great format and nice way to bring up topics pertinent to home gardening. Thank you both.
My garden has one dug bed of silty clay loam, heavy on the clay, amended with compost and used potting mix. It's in the sunniest spot, so I'll still grow squash in it every year. The early morning sun that the rest of my garden doesn't get is good for minimizing powdery mildew.
My garlic and potatoes are rotated as I put in new no-dig beds with last year's potting mix and compost. I think it might help avoid diseases, but mostly it's a matter of convenience. New potting mix in my containers grow eggplant, peppers, carrots and celery, while root vegetables grow in these new beds. All of it is amended with compost, so I'm not worried about nutrient deficiencies.
Interesting, didn't realize the early morning sun helps minimize mildew. Good note.
Really, really appreciate the information and clarification. Going to jump over to view Simplify Gardening's video, too!
I like to rotate some crops. Like I move the summer squash around just to try and stay ahead of the squash bugs. I tend to keep them in a raised bed that's kinda isolated from the others.
Thanks for this video and I have watched Tony from Simplifying Gardening on the same subject and Huw Richard (another UK based gardener) did a video explaining that crop rotation is a waste of time and that he doesn't practice crop rotation himself. It sounds like crop rotation isn't necessary for gardening but is for farmers. Since i am not a farmer I won't be doing crop rotation.
Thank You for having this discussion. I have never really practiced successive gardening.I have made a decision to try it. Where I live our garden irrigation gets shut off in early October. That makes watering a little more difficult. But I am still going to try it. There is certainly more than one reason. plants are having trouble.
love the idea that succession planting is a type of crop rotation. i've watched both videos and hope to see more of this style with you both or from you both with others. this is surely the best on youtube, IMHO!!!
Wow. thanks. We worked hard setting this up and the idea was to make it different from other collaborations. I for one am glad it came across that way :)
There is a great you tube video about how we changeing the farmers to do cover crops. It is listed as " USDA NRCS: Under Cover Farmers, Feature Length.
Thank you for such great topic, much appreciated!
Tony & Scott, perfect timing for this vid! With everything going on in the world today, people are seeing the food shortages and are reacting. Try to find canning jars, lids, & seals...nonexistent!!! I always read to never plant tomatoes in the same bed every year because of wilt, but one site I follow says he plants tomatoes in the same area every year with no issues. I like the advice of cover crops. Might be too late for me here in PA, zone 6, not sure, I'll research. If I could find a way to grow toilet paper, I'll be set...LOL (subbing Tony's channel)
Thanks. It's probably not too late for cover crops, depending on the plant. They may not reach full size before freezing but it's a good thing to try.
@@GardenerScott I think I'll try annual rye, quick sprout and then done.
Hey, maverick. Glad you enjoyed this and thanks for checking my channel out and subbing :)
When we planted out the strawberries from the window, we threw in a few other types of seeds with them. The garden cress grew the fastest, and is the only brassica that I would put with low growing plants as all the other brassicas overrun the garden beds they are in. Even so, we still had to pull out most of the garden cress to keep the strawberries in full sun, as they need to establish themselves. Things like onions and carrots should do better with the strawberries, and the better we can interplant with them the more of each plant we will have growing in the garden, and the more resilient the garden will be, as well as each type of plant, as the ones that do better in various adverse conditions can support the ones that do badly in those conditions, usually in summer, when there is plenty more sun than any one plant can handle. Overall, rotation becomes silly when plants are allowed to grow as long as they were designed to, and a lot of the garden plants we treat as annuals can survive a mid-continent winter, and become the first plants to come back in the spring~
We keep ending up with tons of radish seed, and the plants from them grow all sorts of different ways, so we're going to try using radishes as a cover, to use what's on hand~
Have not seen any videos from Tony in quite a while.
I follow both of you, and I'm geeking out over your collaboration. I agree that crop rotation isn't necessary. Those of us with small plots are limited to where to plant anyway. I plant my plants where I plant them because it meets their needs as far as sunlight goes. Also, side question. What are your thoughts about using mulching materials in your beds that are inoculated with beneficial fungi? Even in your path ways. Incorporate edible mushrooms into your beds to control bad fungus.
Thanks. I think using fungal sources is great for the garden. I use a lot of wood chips and leaves to incorporate them into my soil. I haven't added edible mushrooms, but they can be a nice option.
I have a small home garden. Because i dont like to repeat work, i xhose companion planting and mostly perennial plants. I do have a few annual beds,though
How do they both have the same background? 😀 Good info.
Thanks. I used a green screen to copy Tony's studio so that our videos match.
Thank you so much for this video. I watch both you and Tony’s channel and am learning so much. My little garden is small so I have a small 10 x4 raised bed I grow my green beans, bell pepper, eggplant, and assorted other veggies and 6, 5 gallon buckets that I grow tomatoes in. Each year I am end the soil in both but was just wondering if I could reuse the old soil in the buckets if I amend them. Love y’all’s channel.🍁👩🌾
This is a great video guys!!! I ask people when they tell me not to do companion planting. How is it that multiple species of plants and trees are able to coexist in the woods and Forrest and all still thrive in the same ecosystem? There is no one out there feeding,watering, fertilizing, rotating and so on! I don’t get it! I companion plant all the time and have no problems. Plants know what they need out the soil. With all the other plants and trees out there with them dropping leaves for natural compost. More than enough nutrients for all to coexist. Organic Fertilizer will always be there as long as leaves are dropping and decomposing releasing vital nutrients and minerals to all that require it.
Good morning Gardener Scott. Thank you for this video. My question is, should we rotate onions and garlic? I’ve read that garlic should be rotated every 3 years. Will you clear this up for me? Thanks again.
I don't crop rotate in my garden for the most part. My tomatoes go where they were the year before. I amend the soil enough not to worry about it and I have never really had a soil born disease. The rest of my plants go wherever I want them each year. Tomatoes stay because of how I stake them. I have great crops, always have.
I guess I should say I pull the plants at the end of the season, laver a layer of leaves and grass and cover it with cardboard. By the spring the worms have eaten everything and I am good to go the next year. Works for me.
I have been using the same 60x100 plot of ground for over 40 years. In that time I have pretty well seen what likes what. It is a fact in my garden that my squash likes a certain portion. Period. Year after year. Dittos cabbages and some other things. Corn...rotate or don't rotate. It does splendidly. I never really gave the crop rotation thing much thought. I just did it. The ONLY thing in my garden that MUST be rotated is tomatoes. Those rows get planted in a different place each year. If not rotated, you get diminishing returns. That's just the way it is. For that chore I use wire strung on 8ft landscape timbers. I have to 'build' the dang row structure anew each year in a different space. A pain....but I have gosh awesome yields.
Hi. Just wondering how it is your backgrounds look so similar?
James I was in my Studio. We took a photo of it and then Scott put it through greenscreen in order to keep it looking clean and better on the eyes for you guys who were viewing.
Hi, James. I used a green screen to match his background.
I was just thinking the same :)
I was an FFA award winner when I graduated. But today I think farmers should follow the ways of cover croping and organic practices....
Great video Gardener Scott. It seems that you and Tony are cut from the same cloth, and not just because you’re planting the same cover crop!
I’ve learnt so much more in this last year from watching both yours’ and Tony’s videos than in the last 20 years of gardening. It’s my first year mulching and growing cold season crops.
When I was planting my spring cabbages, the instructions said not to grow In a bed where spring cabbages have been grown within the last year. It didn’t apply to me, but on the basis of your discussion can this advice be ignored?
Best wishes
Roy from London, UK
Thanks. Spring cabbages can be susceptible to pests that lay eggs or have larvae in soil and that's where the advice comes from. I like to add compost to my spring beds and that's usually enough to disrupt the life cycle of pests like that. As long as you watch for pests and understand their growth you can plant in the same bed.
Thanks for the information and replying to my message!
Roy
thinking more plant succession in a bed, given time, can be enough like rotation.
Please tell me Scott.
Should I fix this anaerobic bacteria issue before planting cucumbers or sweet peppers? _And if so... How?_
*THANKS!!!*
Aerating soil by turning it can help. Avoid saturating the soil. Aerobic bacteria should be dominant in most moist soils that are not compacted.
@@GardenerScott That's not an option with straw bales.
I thought crop rotation would not be necessary as long as I did the same thing the Native folks back east during the Pilgrim Era did. If you grow corn on a patch, harvest the cob and drop the cornstalks back onto the patch. The nutrients taken up by the corn will be put back into the soil. Chop and drop.
well yes but they still used fertilizer from outside sources such as fish to replenish what they took from the soil (corn cobs)
What netting and purpose was over your right shoulder at minute 4:35 ish, with the broccoli on your left?
I'm not sure what you mean because I was inside talking with Tony for the whole video. If you're referring to another video please comment on that one.
@@GardenerScott oops, I must have gotten that mixed up with another video. Thanks!
I'd always heard that you shouldn't plant solanaceae in the same space where you had some the previous season, because of pernicious nematode population building up. So you should avoid, say tomatoes where you had peppers or potatoes, etc. But, as you two say, one doesn't do monoculture and keeps renewing the topsoil, so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll check out Tony's channel too.
I have Sandy soil with on clay . Should I add clay like cat litter?
Add organic matter. Adding clay won't improve the the soil and it would take a very large amount to modify sandy soil. Organic matter can do it quicker and better.
Great video Scott and Tony, I've been watching both your videos for last couple years for sure. I have a question I hope you can answer. I live in North West Ontario so our winters are very cold and long. Can I use fresh cut grass as a mulch and then turn it in the soil then next spring or would I have to rake it off and reapply it after I plant new stuff in the spring. Here we have frost sometimes to middle of June like last year and early in September often. I'm pretty sure it is good or OK to use grass as mulch on top but is it ok to turn in the soil also? Thank you for your reply if you reply and thank you for you videos.
Thanks, Frank. You can, but I prefer to turn fresh grass into the soil in autumn as an amendment. For a short growing season, turning it into soil in late spring may not provide enough time for it to decompose. In my region the winter winds would blow it away as a mulch. I blend dry grass and crushed leaves as a mulch over winter; it is more likely to stay in place.
@@GardenerScott thankyou for your answer. I did put lots of crushed leaves on top of garden last fall, not even sure how much of that decomposed. I did plant potatoes in that hugel culture bed and just yesterday put thin layer of fresh cut grass on top as mulch. So what you're saying I think I could even add a little more grass clippings over the summer, then turn it in the fall and put mulched leaves on top for winter and that should be good, I hope.
It is really hard to do crop rotation when you have a small garden or only one bed. Adding organic matter is important. It is fine to grow plants in the same place year after year if they do well. However, sometimes, the plants are not in the best place. If they don't grow well then maybe you have the wrong choice of cultivar or the wrong plant for your location. Some diseases become so pervasive that it makes that crop impossible to grow well. I can't grow sweet basil anymore because of basil downy mildew. Some crops do have to rotate out. If the problem with the soil is nematodes, then only nematode resistant crops will work. Crops that cannot tolerate nematodes have to go into pots or in clean soil. I do believe in crop succession. Different crops use nutrients in different amounts. I do follow heavy feeder crops with nutrient scavengers, so I rotate plants in time.
I was rotating my turnips/beets with onions/lettuce to fight the white butterfly from Hell: never worked (I use the decoy method now with nearly 100% success, btw)
About powdery mildew and better locations...
I thought the birds in my garden were spreading most of the WPM and other soil born diseases but I investigated this year and found nearby trees have been shedding diseased leaves. Two to three days after a nasty-leaf is found on a tomato branch, the exact location rotted away. I'm moving all my tomatoes far away from the sick trees.
Do you think that sometimes powdery mildew might come from the seeds themselves?
I haven't seen any research that connects seeds to powdery mildew. It is so common that I think the spores are pervasive in most environments.
How did you both get the same background when your suppose to be in different countries?
Tony send me a photo of his studio and I used it on my green screen background.
An amateur gardening neighbour has #RootRot (Plasmodiophora brassicae) in his garden and regrets not rotating. That protozoan can even survive in soil algae and weeds from the Cruciferae family and it is hard to get rid of the desease.
There are some farmers in north central Indiana who live near large poultry farms. They do have enough organic matter to add to these fields and they grow some really good crops on large fields. I don’t have pictures but the farmers who live in Fulton and Northern Miami counties do so much better than say in Howard and Tipton counties that rely more on chemicals.
I dont do crop rotaion, other than that if one crop goes out i make sure to put in another crop, so potatoes out, leek goes in.. I also do interplanting. Plants basically all use the same nutrients so it just serves no purpose.
Weed don't rotate and they seem to do great year after year in the same spot. I just make sure i add manure and compost.
Never knew they have British power sockets in Colorado.
😂 They cyber-shared a background. Scott had the green screen..
Is there any truth that different plants take in nutrients at different ratio's?
I know that osmotic processes are going on so it could be possible but it doesn't seem necessarily true.
Yes, different plants will absorb different nutrients at different rates. Some plants are referred to as "heavy feeders" because the require more nitrogen. Generally, leafy plants will use more nitrogen and flowering plants will use more phosphorus.
Crop rotation such a hassle!