[princesslayer]

I've got a big bed split into four currently, two lots of potatoes, a load of peas and beans and a load of brassicas and other things  (plus some extra bits dotted around the garden).

I plan to do a rotation with these according to Hessayon's basic plan.

Question is, now my early potatoes are coming out can I sneak something else in for a bit or do I need to go straight into next years plan?  I want to use up what space there is available.

What is anyone else backfilling their spaces with? 

Thanks

[Fleecewife]

Don't get your knickers in a twist about following the plan to the letter.  If you think what the rotation is for then you can work out for yourself what to do.  Mainly crop rotation is about reducing the risk of pests and disease, much of which is type specific, and for optimising your use of manures and green manures.
But, specifically, allocate a veg type each year to its own area.  This means you could have spring cabbages, followed immediately by curly kale, summer broccoli or radishes, all in the one year.  The difficulty comes with crops which go in one year but are harvested the following year, such as winter purple sprouting broccoli.  I don't follow a rigid rotation plan, and my garden ground isn't divided into discrete areas, so  where overwintering crops grow doesn't bother me, as I simply put that veg type far away from that area the following year.
I would follow the potatoes with leeks, beetroot, lettuce and so on.  Leeks are part of the allium family, so perhaps this is against the rules, but if I did that then I wouldn't put onions, garlic or shallots in that same piece of ground the following year. Beetroot, chard, lettuce etc are not part of the major groups so tend to be fitted into odd corners anyway.
The one to be really careful of is not to follow potatoes with outdoor tomatoes, as they are both the same group and susceptible to the dreaded blight.

[HesterF]

I've got my potatoes next to my tomatoes and the potatoes are now blighted :-( Must remember to spray the tomatoes - I've had blight every year since moving back to the UK 3 years ago. I don't ever remember it being so bad when I last grew tomatoes here years ago.

Back to the question - I've just plonked my childrens' pumpkin plants into where the garlic has come out but same could apply to early potatoes. It's a bit late with pumpkins to be honest but the crows have been devastating my main pumpkin patch - along with all the sweetcorn - so I may be tempted to put more in closer to the house where the cats patrol better. As far as I can remember both pumpkins and sweetcorn are fairly free on crop rotation as they don't suffer from any of the soil born diseases than normally prompt the potatoes and calabrese to move, although pumpkins are greedy so may be beneficial to follow them with fixers like peas?

[princesslayer]

Thanks both, that's given me a few good ideas. What are the crows doing to the pumpkins HesterF? Mine are in a crow-ey area but do far no interest from them?

[cloddopper]

I've got a big bed split into four currently, two lots of potatoes, a load of peas and beans and a load of brassicas and other things  (plus some extra bits dotted around the garden).

I plan to do a rotation with these according to Hessayon's basic plan.

Question is, now my early potatoes are coming out can I sneak something else in for a bit or do I need to go straight into next years plan?  I want to use up what space there is available.

What is anyone else backfilling their spaces with? 

Thanks

If you're doing the old fashioned row by row stuff just follow Hessayan's second crop planning , they do well in ground that has recently given up spuds.

 If he says don't manure then don't , if he says dress with Grow More or powdered fish , blood and bone meal then do it ..

[cloddopper]

I've got my potatoes next to my tomatoes and the potatoes are now blighted :-( Must remember to spray the tomatoes - I've had blight every year since moving back to the UK 3 years ago. I don't ever remember it being so bad when I last grew tomatoes here years ago.

Back to the question - I've just plonked my childrens' pumpkin plants into where the garlic has come out but same could apply to early potatoes. It's a bit late with pumpkins to be honest but the crows have been devastating my main pumpkin patch - along with all the sweetcorn - so I may be tempted to put more in closer to the house where the cats patrol better. As far as I can remember both pumpkins and sweetcorn are fairly free on crop rotation as they don't suffer from any of the soil born diseases than normally prompt the potatoes and calabrese to move, although pumpkins are greedy so may be beneficial to follow them with fixers like peas?

I might be trying to teach granny to suck eggs on this one ..hope not .

As well as only planting in the open where they will not get shaded during the day , try making the spacing's a lot bigger say three feet or more between tomato plants and strip the lower leaves off once there is an open  flowering truss directly above them ..this allows better air flow around the plants .

 Don't go watering them too much and don't water them for a couple of hours before sunset , this is to allow the water to dry off before the evening cool comes along and the humidity around the plants starts to rise .

In my glasshouse I have inserted a low level auto cool air in vent that trips open when the top two roof vents open .

The door to the glasshouse is now  an inch or so open every day as well, so the air flow can work in reducing the humidity .

 I water in the glasshouse automatically 2min twice a day on a time clock valve and adjustable spray head that are set to drip about a 300 mm of water in the 2 min.
I still feed 200 ml of tomato feed at the fruiting rate to plants with tomatoes on them with by hand each .
 Non fruited plants get a weaker of 200 ml feed every other day .