A Guide to Choosing the Best Spring Crops to Plant
Just as spring rolls around and the weather begins to warm up, it’s the right time to get ready for the planting season ahead. However, you can't plant just anything. You must take into account the soil, seeds, farm equipment, and also consider the weather in your area. There are a lot of factors to consider while deciding what to plant this season.
At Rivera's Machinery, Inc., we like to help our patrons make the best use of their land and farm equipment, which is why we’ve crafted this brief guide about what crops you can plant in spring. Keep reading to learn more and if you’ve any questions, feel free to get in touch with us at our dealership in Donna, Texas.
Consider Your Property
The land you’ll be working on is one of the biggest factors for choosing the kind of crops you can plant. For example, if you have a small box garden, you can consider planting different vegetables in rows or sections so you can enjoy different nutritious meals during the summer. When it comes to deciding what to plant in bigger fields, you’ll have to test the soil and see which crops are compatible or make the soil ready for your chosen crop by adding nutrients to it.
Crop Rotation
If you’ve got fields that have been growing the same crops years after year, you should know that that’s a bad move for your soil. The best kind of soil is the one that has a bunch of different nutrients. If you keep planting one crop, then it’s bound to lose some essential nutrients, which leaves your soil prone to erosion.
Another negative impact of planting one crop repeatedly is that it gives certain pests and diseases time to settle in and start to thrive in a consistent environment. For a while, these problems were addressed by not planting anything for a year to let the soil replenish itself.
Crop families take different nutrients from your soil and also help replenish various nutrients. When you’re choosing crops, keep in mind their family, what effect they have on the soil and which crops would be best to follow with. This information will help you create an optimum crop rotation calendar.
The general idea is to change the crop family of a particular piece of land once every one to three years. Here’s a basic breakdown of family rotation that you can follow:
- Brassicas: kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts
- Potato family: tomatoes, peppers, potatoes
- Roots: carrots, celery, fennel
- Marrow and/or beetroot: cucumber, beets, squash spinach
- Legumes: beans, peas, cover crops (such as alfalfa)
We hope that these tips will help you decide what spring crops to plant this season. To find out more or if you want to check out some quality farm equipment for sale in Donna, TX, get in touch with us at Rivera's Machinery, Inc. We welcome all those coming from Harlingen and San Benito.