Then map out this year's vegetable garden. By Lee Reich The Associated Press Gather on the kitchen table some clean white paper, a sharpened pencil, a ruler, and notes and plans of gardens past. Then map out this year's vegetable garden. The first order of business is to plan for crop rotation. Not planting any vegetable in the same spot more often than every fourth year starves out some pests before they have a chance to multiply.
Pests often are equally fond of all plants in a plant family, so rotate by family.
Tomato, pepper, eggplant, and potato are in one family. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts are in another. Beans and peas are in yet another, and the same goes for carrots, celery, celeriac, and parsley. So in the years before you replant tomatoes, you could grow cabbages, then beans, then carrots in that spot. You might also rotate plants according to their effect on the soil.