A season of beans followed by garlic, a rest year that gives a bed a break from its usual crops.
Why these are grouped
A rest for the soil. It benefits next season’s crop as a rotation break and green manure. The plants are not claimed to help each other while they grow.
At least 0.3 m²3 ft². If your bed is smaller, the planner grays this plant team out, says why, and offers the nearest adaptation that fits. It never swaps in something else without telling you.
What it looks like planted
3 × Common bean
8 × Garlic
The real placement on an example 4 ft bed, the same layout the planner draws.
Between seasons
Nothing is left living in the bed over winter; the whole planting is re-established.
How it works: A legume fixes atmospheric nitrogen into its tissue as it grows. When the crop is killed and its residue decomposes, soil microbes mineralize that organic nitrogen, converting a form plants can't use into one they can, and release it for the next crop. How much depends on how well the legume grew, and it is lower on sandy soils.
Evidence: checked against 2 sources in the research-based literature.
The nitrogen credit depends on the amount of crop growth and when the legume was planted. Nitrogen credits are 50 lb N/a lower on sandy, coarse-textured soils.
Low rotation pressure; occupies ground through the off-season
How it works: They host none of the big-three families' soilborne pathogens, so following those crops with an allium or apiaceous crop breaks the host cycle. They are not inherently low-pressure, though. Allium white rot (Sclerotium cepivorum) is allium-specific, its sclerotia persist 15+ years, and it cannot be eradicated once established; apiaceous crops carry their own soilborne diseases.
Evidence: checked against 1 source in the research-based literature.
