How to Rotate Vegetable Crops

Rotating your veggies helps reduce insects and plant disease, and allows the soil to recharge and rebalance its minerals.

Step 1: Get a guide to vegetable plants from a home store or garden supply shop. It will list the different plant "families" or groupings.
Step 2: From season to season, avoid growing vegetables from same family in the same garden.
Step 3: For the best results, develop a three-year rotation plan, such as legumes like peas, beans, and peanuts the first year; onions, carrots, and tomatoes the second; and turnips and kale the third.
Step 4: Follow your three-year plan and plant seeds from a different family in each garden plot at the start of the growing season.
FACT: Did you know? George Washington Carver, who developed hundreds of uses for peanuts, introduced the concept of crop rotation in the American South.