Want to be an advanced vegetable gardener? You will be when you know which vegetables are in which families.

This is crucial info for healthy crop rotation in your garden (and you’ll be able to astonish your friends with new vocabulary like cucurbits).

You can memorize all the vegetable families—or just bookmark this article and check on it before you plant each season.

Crop rotation sounds like one of those headachey projects involving graph paper and Number 2 pencils.

It’s not so bad.

You don’t need graph paper, but you should make a map of your vegetable garden.

Create a map online with a program like SmartGardener.com (one of their plans is shown above).

Or pull out a piece of paper, sketch your plantings, and write the year on the map. Keep the maps where you can find them (inside your Sunset Western Garden Book?) because you’ll need 4 to 5 years of records.

The basic rule: Wait 3 years until you replant families in the same place.

Why? Soil borne diseases build up when similar plants grow in the same space for more than a year. You don’t want to deal with club root, fusarium wilt, or vertciliium wilt, do you? If you keep moving the plants you’ll help thwart the diseases.

Just like any family, not all members of plant families look alike. See which relatives surprise you the most!

NIGHTSHADES Solanaceous
Tomatoes
Tomatillos
Eggplants
Peppers
Okra (one of those shirt-tail cousins that gets argued about—some say it’s a Mallow)
Potatoes

MORNING GLORY
Sweet potato

MELONS & SQUASH Cucurbits
Cucumbers
Zucchini & Summer Squash
Watermelon
Musk Melon
Pumpkin
Gourd

GOOSEFOOT
Beet
Spinach
Chard
Quinoa
Orach

SUNFLOWER
Sunflower
Jerusalem artichoke
Lettuce (surprised?)
Endive
Artichoke

COLE Brassicas
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Cabbage
Kale
Collards
Radishes
Kohlrabi
Rutabaga
Turnip
Mustard

ONIONS (this one’s easy)
Onion
Leeks
Chives
Garlic

PEAS Legumes
Peas
Runner beans
Bush beans
Fava beans
Garbanzo beans
Peanuts

GRASSES
Corn
Millet
Rice
Barley
Wheat
Rye

PARSLEY
Parsley
Carrots
Parsnips (another surprise?)
Celery
Fennel
Cilantro/Coriander

Tricia gives you the big picture on crop rotation and garden planning in our latest video.

Everyone likes a change of scene. Get to know the families of your favorite vegetables and make sure they move around the garden with crop rotation.

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