Uncle John, in the first place, crop rotation is a myth.

Crop rotation resulted from soil depletion when monoculture and factory farming raised their ugly heads. It was the only way to get the soil to produce before the days of massive chemicals.

In the home garden the very idea was a joke, being that most home gardeners 1. raise the same few veggie types each year; and 2. don't have room to rotate anyway.

Basically, there are only two reasons to rotate crops. One is soil depletion. The other is a massive infection of a soil-borne disease or pest.

Add to this the fact that alliums---as the 19th century onion breeders discovered---actually benefit from being grown in the same ground, and there is no reason at all to rotate your alliums. I've been growing them in the same beds for 5 years. Martin has had permanent beds for something like 20.

Note that I said "alliums" rather than garlic or onions. In my case, I have an area roughly 18 x 20 that is reserved for alliums. I don't pay much attention, though, to what type goes into any particular spot. So, one year there might be garlic in a row area. The next year might be garlic, or onions might get planted there.

This bed is heavily amended with compost, blood meal, bone meal and wood ashes each fall, and again as a side-dressing to growing plants. As a result, the alliums bed just gets better and better every year.

So, what I'm saying in a rather long-winded way, is to keep using your alliums bed for onions and garlic.

I have one bed that appears to have a bad infestation of a wilt (dunno if it is F or W, but many of my tomatoes in that bed have lost over half their leaves). Are alliums succeptible to wilts? Perphaps I should consider rotating them to give my tomatoes a break.

In the scheme of things, my galic is much more important to me than tomatoes. I don't want to do anything to jeapordize them, but if a swap might be mutually beneficial, perhaps I should consider it.

According to the literature, there is a long list of things alliums are subject to.

In my own experience, however, there doesn't seem to be much that bothers them; garlic in particular is very low maintainance.

As long as one replaces the nutrients taken out, and no diseases are ever present, there is no need to rotate. Garlic acreage worldwide isn't sufficient enough to allow rotation in the commercial world so rotation needs apparently indeed are a myth. Especially so since so many ordinary gardeners also don't do it.

We know what alliums need in terms of NPK. All we need do is maintain the soil nutrients at a level that they like. That is, a 1-2-1 NPK ratio. Although I've always depended upon my own compost, with probably more of a 1-1-1 ratio, I'm going with something else this year. There's a weed cutter operating on one of our local lakes. The weeds are European milfoil. After a month or so, each 4' pile reduces down to less than a foot. It looks exactly like semi-dry cattle manure at that point. Since excess phosphorus is the main culprit for the massive weed growth in the lake, I should think that the condensed material should be perfect for alliums. We'll see since I plan on bringing home a lot of it!

Martin

Glad to hear that milfoil may be able to serve some useful purpouse. I may have another reason to move the garlic: the bed I am considering moving (at least some of) it to receives more sun, probably an hour more (13 rather than 12 hours, I think). Decisions, decisions.

So how about an early spring feed of a bit of extra nitrogen(3-2-1).Will this add any to helping create more leaf growth helping to give larger bulbs when mature?
Bill