All About Crop Rotation

Explore your options for crop rotation to keep soil fertile.

By Ron Macher
Published on December 18, 2014
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Explore your options for crop rotation to keep soil fertile and discover the advantages of crop rotation for longevity. 

Crop Rotation

Crop rotation is the process of planting a different crop after each previous crop, which allows the different plants to take advantage of nutrients the previous plants didn’t use, and to put different nutrients into the soil to avoid depletion of overall nutrients. For example, corn uses nitrogen; soybeans replace it. Following corn with soybeans avoids nitrogen depletion.

Crop rotation dates back farther than Roman times. Farmers in those days began rotations to replenish the land instead of using up its fertility and abandoning the field.

A rotation should be planned so that you have the greatest possible value of salable or usable crop material during a period of years. When planning a rotation, also consider labor needs and soil fertility. Ideally, a rotation will help spread out your labor needs, because you have a diversity of crops ready to harvest at different times of the year.

Crops are divided into three classes: grain crops, like wheat and barley; grass crops, including sods and legumes used for pasture/hay; and cultivated crops, like corn and soybeans. You can substitute crops within types, depending on weather conditions and year. For instance, you can plant barley instead of wheat; both are small grains. Ideally, farm fields would be square, but this often does not happen in real life, so just try to keep plots all the same size — that is, if you plant 10 acres of corn, follow it with a full 10 acres of soybeans, then 10 acres of hay, and so on.

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