spud trench - how deep?

[tim]

Pity one never has the time, room or cash to do a trial of all these techniques.

[tim]

[Clayhithe]

P'raps this is the kind of trial Monty or GQT should be doing.
How do we ask them?

[Mrs Ava]

Here are mine.  Still loads to try and get in but I fear I am now out of room! 

[aquilegia]

EJ - can't those Daffs come out?

[Mrs Ava]

Well they could Aqui, but......hmm....I had convinced myself they would stay and now you go and do that to me!!!!

To be honest, there isn't that much room between the daffs and the start of my 'squash' structure, I would probably only get one row in.....however.......mmm......I shall have a good look and think when I am down there next....

[RichardS]

EJ - how long are those rows (difficult to tell from the perspective)?

I was worrying that I'd overdone it with my spuds this year - 7 x 15' rows, 4 of maincrop desiree, and 1 1/2 each of salad (pink fur apple) & earlies (international kidney, plus handful of leftover desirees to be lifted as earlies).

however, counting nine rows in your pic I don't feel so bad!  Was beginning to worry about the lack of space for other things down the lottie, but then I realised that the purple sprouting broccoli won't be long before it's up & out, giving me another bed to play with.

[redimp]

I thought I had all my potatoes in - two rows of first earlies, two rows of second earlies and one row of maincrop.  However, just popped to the local gardeners centre and bought another two rows of maincrops (Kind Eds) for £1.99.  Now I am wondering what to do with my carrots and parsnips which are currently in loo and kitchen roll tubes.  Does it matter if I plant these somewhere else in my rotation.  I have already decided to split off my alliums and go over to a four bed rotation next year (Potatoes & Roots/Alliums/Legumes/Brassicas)

[Sarah-b]

Hi Redclanger - rotation is only there as a guide - you know a rule to be broken. It's obviously a good idea - but don't let it spoil your fun. I always wonder on just an allotmnt sized bit of ground, how much good rotation would really do in the face of some kind of virus disaster etc.
Also, some people use rotation as a solution to a particular problem that they have discovered, rather than the norm - ie some gardeners have a permanent bean bed and a permanent onion bed. Someone may shout me down,.....
sb

[Clayhithe]

Wouldn't dream of shouting you down Sarah-b . .

Rotation was invented long before we had decent fertilizers and decent pest killers (When we were really organic!).   The rotation groups were much bigger than present day allotments.

It's important to manure the potatoes but not the roots,  so the roots should come one or two places after the potatoes.
The long tap roots (eg parsnips) bring up minerals which have leached down.
Most leaf crops deplete the soil of nitrogen so the legumes put it back if you leave the roots in the ground.
Only time gets rid of clubroot so the brassicas need to rotate as widely as possible.

No amount of rotation stops potato blight in a really wet year.
Or aphids.

That said,  my pa-in-law always dug his bean trench in the same place every year (actually,  I dug it,  and then my sons dug it!)
and his leek and onion beds never moved.   He grew wonderful veg.