This four year crop rotation planner helps raised-bed gardeners who want a longer four-year rotation keep beds healthy year after year. You enter a few numbers, and the tool works out a rotation that stops the same crop family returning to a bed too soon. That matters because growing the same family in one bed builds up pests and drains the same nutrients. Rotation breaks pest cycles and lets soil recover, so yields stay strong without heavy chemicals.
Rotation works by family, not by single crop. Cabbage, broccoli and kale are one family and share the same pests. Peas and beans are legumes that feed soil with nitrogen. Roots and onions are light feeders that follow heavy feeders well. The tool groups crops this way, so a bed that grew cabbage last year grows something unrelated this year, and pests that waited in the soil find nothing to eat.
To use the tool, enter each value in order: Number of beds, Number of crop families. Then press Calculate to see the result. Each line shows one part of the plan, so you can spot a number that looks wrong before you draw a bed map. If you change any value, press Calculate again. The example button fills in a worked case so you can see how the tool behaves before you enter your own numbers.
Here is a worked example. Take 4 beds and 4 crop families give a 4 year plan with 16 bed plots over four years, and all 4 beds grow legumes in the legume year. That result is the point of the tool: one clear rotation, with each part visible. If a neighbour asks why you move crops each year, you can walk through the same lines. If you add a bed or a family, you change one number and the plan updates. That makes planning fast and keeps every bed in the cycle.
Rotating well also means writing the plan down. Draw a simple bed map each spring, note which family went where, and keep last year map beside it. Without a written map, most gardeners repeat the same bed by accident within two years. A map takes five minutes and saves a season of pest trouble, and it makes next year planning a matter of shifting each family one bed forward.
Three mistakes show up again and again. The first is rotating single crops but keeping the same family in the bed, which fools nobody but the gardener. The second is skipping the legume year, so soil nitrogen slowly falls. The third is having no written plan, so beds drift back to old habits. Rotate by family, include legumes, and write it down.
Tips
- Draw the bed map on paper. A phone photo of the map is a good backup for next spring.
- Always include a legume year. Peas and beans feed the soil for the heavy feeders that follow.
- Rest a bed if you can. A season of green manure rebuilds a tired bed faster than any bag of feed.
How many years should a rotation last?
Three to four years suits most gardens. Four years is safer for brassicas, which suffer most from soil pests, while three years works well in small gardens with fewer beds.
What if I only have one bed?
Split the bed into sections and rotate families between sections. Even small sections break pest cycles better than growing one family in the whole bed every year.
Do pots need rotation too?
Yes, change the compost and the family each year in pots as well. Old pot compost holds pests just like bed soil, so fresh compost plus a new family keeps container crops healthy.
Versión en español: Planificador de Rotación de Cultivos a Cuatro Años