If you’re cultivating a garden to help enhance your food security, there are several ways to keep it as healthy and productive as possible.
We will touch on how to use crop rotation in a few different ways to keep growing food year-round. These techniques will differ between regions but can be adapted to suit just about any growing zone and space allotment.
What is Crop Rotation?
We’ve touched upon crop rotation in some of our other articles, but we’ll summarize the concept here as well.
Crop rotation generally refers to not planting crops in the same places successively. Instead, we move them around from one patch to another over a four-year cycle to keep the soil healthy and replenished while (hopefully) avoiding harmful pathogens.
This works for improved food security because healthy soil results in healthy plants. When we plant crops in the same place repeatedly, they deplete the soil’s nutrients and end up sicklier and less fecund in the future.
By rotating them around, the different species deposit nutrients that the next batch will draw from and will confuse insects that would otherwise prey on a monocrop. As you can imagine, this generally results in healthier, higher-yielding plants.
Crop rotation can also include succession planting (i.e., planting either the same or different plants in the same space over the course of different seasons) and interplanting. It also involves growing crops in various locations, such as in the garden, on the patio, or indoors.
Plant Successively
Succession planting is a technique in which you use the same area to grow different crops in order to maximize both space and yield. It can also refer to planting the same crop at different times of the year.
This technique is spectacular for food security because you can grow three to four times as much food in one single space, especially if you do intercropping as well.
Here’s an example: I’m in zone 4b/5a, which has cool spring and autumn weather, intensely hot summers, and freezing winters.
If I try to grow peas or kale in July or August, the peas will wither, and the kale will bolt in 0.02 seconds flat. As a result, I grow a pea crop as soon as the ground thaws in springtime (usually late April or early May) and then another after the blistering heat ends around mid-September.
After I’ve harvested the first pea crop (including removing all spent vines), I work some fresh compost into the soil and plant cucumber seedlings in the same space.
This follows the legumes>fruits>roots>leaves crop rotation cycle to good effect. Furthermore, I can train the cucumbers up the pea trellis to maximize space and minimize fungal pathogens and animal predation.
By going this route, I get three vegetable harvests from a single area. You can do the same thing with plants that have different light requirements. Just ensure you don’t plant incompatible species in the same bed.
For example, don’t plant tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants in the same bed where you grew kale or fennel, as those plants release chemicals that can inhibit nightshade (Solanaceae) plant growth.
If you go this route, remember to amend the soil with calcium so your cukes don’t get blossom end rot. Then, after the cucumbers have been harvested, I replenish the soil with some nitrogen-rich compost tea and sow a new batch of peas.
Since the goal here is maximizing food security, you don’t want to sabotage your efforts by creating less-than-ideal growing conditions. Aim for the most compatible species for succession planting, and keep your soil well nourished. Soil health is everything.
Interplant Your Crops
Since we mentioned companion plants (i.e. “good neighbors”) above, we should also cover interplanting. This is another invaluable aspect of crop rotation for greater food security, as it involves utilizing every morsel of space available.
Many people create mono-crop areas in which they only grow one particular species. For example, they may have lettuces mapped out in tidy rows with massive gaps between them. These gaps are ideal for weeds to establish themselves when they can be used to increase food security instead.
If you’re practicing regular crop rotation, aim to interplant with species that are good companions to your primary crop and lend well to rotation.
Let’s use the lettuce example mentioned above. Instead of leaving those gaps open between them, interplant with some of your favorite spring or autumn herbs, depending on which season you’re growing these greens.
Additionally, you’ll need to consider how long they take to mature vs. the vegetable you’re growing. Lettuce will be ready within 40-60 days, depending on the cultivar, so aim for quick-growing herbs like chives or cilantro that have a similar maturation rate.
Make the Most of Each Season for Maximum Food Security
Like the peas mentioned earlier, some crops only thrive well in cooler temperatures. Some even prefer to grow solely in winter, while others will gasp and keel over if they don’t get eight hours of direct sunshine and intense heat daily.
As such, if you’re aiming for the greatest amount of food security possible, take absolute advantage of every scrap of time you have in each season. In addition to planting native cultivars you know will thrive in your area, invest in some that help you extend the growing season.
For example, let’s say you get fairly cold winters where you are. If you plant Siberian cultivars that can handle the intense climate there, you know they’ll thrive in your location and may continue growing long after your regular cultivars ever could.
If you’re in an area with fiercely hot summers, get some Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and North African cultivars. They’ll tolerate the sunshine and heat far better than northern European species, thus increasing food security with a larger, healthier harvest.
Take Advantage of Natural Resources
I cannot stress this one highly enough because you wouldn’t believe how much your food security can be improved by using what’s available around you.
For example, there are many places worldwide that have natural geothermal vents. Many of these are found in northern Europe (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, etc.), but they can also be found in western North America, New Zealand, Turkey, China, and Kenya, to name a few.
If you live in an area with geothermal heat available, utilize it to maximize your garden’s growing potential.
You can either run copper piping under the soil to warm it from below (thus extending your growing season) or use it to heat a greenhouse. The latter is ideal if you want to grow vegetables and fruits year-round for food security, so if you have this as an option, definitely do so!
Remember, you need to rotate your greenhouse crops regularly. Don’t grow the same species in the same bed or container more than twice in a row. Rotate around according to a standard crop rotation chart, replenishing the soil with suitable amendments each time.
Rotate Crops Both Indoors and Outside
Another aspect of crop rotation that isn’t touched upon often is growing some crops indoors and others out in your garden. This is particularly beneficial in areas where growing space may be scant or if there’s a short growing season.
One way we work towards greater food security here in rural Quebec is to grow food indoors during winter. Some can be grown with the weak natural winter sunlight, while others require full-spectrum lights to flourish.
Take note of which food plants you enjoy can be grown relatively easily indoors, and try growing them inside for at least part of the year—especially during these plants’ “off” season.
For example, remember how those cool-weather crops we mentioned earlier (namely peas and kale) don’t thrive well outdoors in summertime?
Try growing these indoors during the summer, where they’ll have less exposure to extreme heat and sun scorch. Grow them in your yard in spring and autumn, then grow another crop indoors in winter.
Since these plants don’t require much light or heat to thrive, you can cultivate them in the cooler months simply by placing their containers near a fairly sunny window. Being able to grow a crop four times a year instead of just two goes a long way toward providing your family with greater food security.
When these crops are grown outdoors, grow something else in the indoor containers. Never let any growing space go to waste when you can use it for vegetables, fruits, or herbs.