this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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You just need a large enough rotation.
What difference would 8 variety’s planted at once vs each planted over an 8 year cycle? Even if you have 8 different species, you still need to rotate them around. So you’re just doing it smaller scale in the end anyways….
As long as you do it right, they will all take and add their own benefits to and from the soil. Even if you have 1000 plant species on your garden, you can’t plant the tomatoes in the same spot every year, that’s not how poly farming works, you still need a rotate within….
Also excellent point.
The poly culture buddy is talking about is more for self sufficient homes. When you’re talking large farms, it’s easier for them to focus on a single crop a year, and roster through them, less storage requirements, less variety of fertilizers and pesticides (ughh another topic).
But yeah you as a family can’t just eat potatoes one year, beans the next, starve for a year while you use clover to fix nitrogen back into the soil. But yeah a collective of eight farmers all growing and rotating their equipment and shit. Fan fucking tastic best way to operate and best for the soil.
But in the end, it all still needs to rotate every year, your soil can’t magically move nutrients from an acre away. The plant only has access the size of its root network.
Depending on your garden you sort of do crop rotation anyways in many setups.
Like if you have four quarter plots of a 48ft2 piece of lawn and do a different crop in each quarter, then rotate the next year. Makes it easy for even yourself to harvest. Easier to notice where your ripe beans to harvest are when they aren't mixed in with your corn plants.
I’ve got 3 4’x12 plots myself, not quite enough to rotate tall stuff like tomatoes and sunflowers properly, but that’s why I maybe do some clover cover crop behind that one one year instead.
Well for individuals I saw the concept of I forget the exact name, something like forest farming or what, basically you start combining plants vertically too, so you add some producing bushes and trees next to your normal crops