According to the principles of crop rotation you should follow your tomato crop with the brassicas and leafy greens like brocolli, pak choi, spinach and, if you’re into it at all, my least favourite green, kale.

Problem is that when you just have the one big square of dirt to play with, you can’t practically go dividing it up into squares.

 That will come later when I can convince the rest of the family that we really don’t need that front lawn.

When that happens, and yes, it will happen, I’ll be BLARFing all over the place in joy.

BLARF is my own way of remembering what crop follows what, it’s not a blanket that you wear as a scarf nor is it anything else that Urban Dictionary has listed.

BLARF stands for Brassicas, Legumes, Alliums, Root and Fruit.

The crop rotation principles uses the ways that each type of plant grows to help benefit the next one. 

As your brassicas grow they take loads of nitrogen from the soil. The legumes will replace that nitrogen and once you’ve dug them in you can plant the alliums like onions and garlic before planting the tomatoes, carrots, spuds, capsicums etc.

The advantages though go beyond soil fertility. Crop rotation helps stop pests and diseases of certain crops getting a hold in that one patch. 

The pests of brassicas aren’t the same as those of alliums for example.

This is all very ideal of course and suggests that you have the time and space to be separating your beds. 

For those of us who tend to simply dig rows and trenches in the one big patch, we have to fortify our soils with organic fertilisers and my favourite additives potash and magnesium.

Full scale BLARFing will just have to wait.