What to plant after tomatoes? Try beans. Legumes and then the cruciferous crops, including brassicas, are what to plant after tomatoes. Legumes are known to trap nitrogen in nodules that form on their roots, adding nitrogen to the soil.
Brassicas or root vegetables (not potatoes, since those are a nightshade) would be a nice idea after tomatoes, since they tend not to harbor too many of the same pests/diseases (at least where I am) as nightshades. Corn would work well, too, although it's pretty demanding on fertility.
For a simple rotation plan consider rotating your crops in the order of the groups above: legumes, followed by leafy vegetables, then fruiting crops, and lastly root crops.
Yes, you can reuse container soil for tomato plants, but it's essential to refresh and amend it to ensure optimal plant health. Remove old plant debris and roots, add organic matter like compost, and mix in a balanced fertilizer to replenish nutrients.
Refresh Before Reuse
One key to success when reusing potting soil is to follow the farming practice of crop rotation and simply grow a different type of plant the following season. This is especially true with potting soil used to grow tomatoes since these high-energy plants tend to zap the growing medium.
Try to plant tomatoes in a different spot every year, rotating through your garden space every three to four years. Planting them in the same place allows disease pathogens that are specific to tomatoes to build up in the soil. By moving them around in the garden each year, you can break up the disease cycle.
Heavy feeders like corn and tomatoes quickly deplete the nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil. Peas and other legumes add nitrogen but need a lot of phosphorus too (you can add bonemeal to supplement the phosphorus).
If tomatoes are planted in the same garden bed the following season, they can attack the next tomato crop or other member of the nightshade family such as peppers, potatoes, and eggplant.
Compost and composted manure are great additions to the soil for tomatoes and lots of other plants. Compost adds basic nutrients and improves soil structure. Composted manure provides nutrients all season long. Composted manure: This provides a slow release of nutrients over the growing season.
Don't plant potatoes where tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants have been. Remove and destroy all infected crop detritus so it can't reinfect new crops. Look for fungal disease-resistant varieties of both tomatoes and potatoes before considering planting tomatoes and potatoes together.
What are the best crops to include in a crop rotation system? Nitrogen-fixing legumes- e.g., beans and peas can enrich the soil with nitrogen. Nitrogen-demanding crops, such as corn and wheat, require higher nitrogen levels and benefit from the nutrients provided by previous legumes.
Or if you grow just tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots, you can rotate those three. The main idea is that you keep things moving around.
Vegetables that don't need crop rotation
Sweetcorn, peas, beans, salads, courgettes, squash, cucumber, radish. Fit these in anywhere that suits, though ideally not in the same spot for many years in succession.
Kale, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower are all cool-season crops ideal for planting after tomatoes.
The simplest rule of thumb is to grow an above-ground crop and then a below-ground crop. Better still rotate the four crop groups that benefit most from crop rotation. These are: Solanaceous crops including both tomatoes and potatoes, peppers and eggplants, capsicums and chillies.
Follow heavy to medium feeders that draw a lot of nutrients from the soil (tomatoes, corn, cabbage, peppers) with either light feeders (carrots, beets, onions) or heavy givers (beans, peas) that will actually fix nitrogen in the soil and enrich it.
If you plan to grow anything from seed or if you plan to grow disease-prone plants like tomatoes or begonias, you'll want to sterilize old potting soil before reusing it.
Use a Sea Salt Fertilizer
It's true that a lot of salt can be bad for plants, but several studies and taste tests have shown that tomatoes grown with salty, brackish water end up tasting better.
Davenport, CA-based Swanton Berry Farms (Santa Cruz County) has been employing this broccoli-strawberry rotation practice for 20 years with delicious results.
Rotating by plant families for three to four years can help keep fungal populations in check. Other vegetable-crop diseases that persist in soil include early blight of potatoes and tomatoes, root-rot fungi of legumes, and fusarium wilt of cucurbits. Crop rotation can also help reduce the buildup of insects.
Tomatoes thrive in loamy soils with good drainage and high organic matter content. Adding composted coffee grounds to planting beds is a great way to build healthy soil for tomato planting but won't provide all the required nutrients.
Nitrogen and potassium are fundamental to achieving high marketable yields. Correct form of nitrogen is critical – ammonium can restrict growth and adversely affect quality. Phosphorus is important for early growth and root development of the establishing seedling.