For rotation, a plant team's crop families count across its whole bed
As recorded: A plant team's crop families count toward rotation across its whole bed.
Promising If you skip this, you lose real yield. The planner warns you.
How it works
Soilborne inoculum and overwintering pest stages disperse across the bed. A plant team dominated by one family forecloses that ground for that family's rotation interval.
What to do about it
Rotate the whole bed the plant team occupied, including rows that family never grew in.
The evidence
Evidence: checked against 2 sources in the research-based literature.
Plant teams that rest on it
- Carrot chive and lettuce
- Carrot onion and dill
- Cutting garden
- Forage strip
- Milpa
- Pickling garden
- Salad garden
- Salsa garden
- Salsa garden (patio)
- Stir-fry garden
- Summer shade salad
- Tomatillo pair
- Tomatillo pair (small bed)
How this rule has changed
Every change is dated, newest first. The full record, with each reason, is in the data download.
- Wording made clearer
- Wording made clearer
- Wording made clearer
- Advice on what to do added
- A person read the sources and confirmed it
- Added to the rules
Cite this page
Milpa Gardens. "For rotation, a plant team's crop families count across its whole bed." Evidence grade: Promising. https://milpa.garden/rules/plant-team-s-crop-families-count-toward/
A garden planner built on graded evidence. Every claim states its evidence grade and links its sources on the page. Cite it with the grade, and add the date you read it.
How we grade evidence
- Well established
- The rule names its mechanism and is settled, by sources a person has read and checked or by plain arithmetic and geometry.
- Promising
- The mechanism is named and the literature backs it. A few questions are still open.
- A good hunch
- Plausible by its mechanism, but field studies are thin, so treat it as a lean.
- Contested
- The evidence points both ways, or no study has tested it, so the planner does not enforce it.
- Refuted
- The claim did not survive its sources. It is kept so the folklore can be answered.