Peas and beans follow potatoes, and there's still time this summer

In a four-bed rotation, peas and beans come after potatoes the following year, then brassicas the year after that. If you’ve just lifted early potatoes in June or July, the bed doesn’t have to sit empty: French beans, lettuce, beetroot, kale and spring cabbage all go in that summer.

The one rule is not to plant anything from the potato family there: tomatoes, peppers, chillies or aubergines, or more potatoes.

Pick what grew in a bed in our crop rotation planner and it shows what follows, year by year.

Next year: peas and beans

The classic four-bed rotation moves each group on one bed a year:

Year	The old potato bed
This year	Potatoes and tomatoes
Next year	Peas and beans
The year after	Brassicas
The fourth year	Roots and onions
Then	Back to potatoes

Potatoes go in the bed that had the most compost or manure dug in, because they’re hungry. Peas and beans follow because they need little feeding and do well on what’s left. Brassicas come next to use the nitrogen that legume roots leave behind. Roots and onions finish the cycle in soil that hasn’t been freshly manured. Our crop rotation guide explains each step.

Any order that keeps families apart for three years works. The important part is that potatoes don’t come back to the same ground for at least three years.

This summer: after earlies

First early potatoes come out from June, second earlies in July and August. That leaves months of growing time. These all fit:

Crop	Sow or plant	Ready
French beans	Sow outside until early August	Late summer to the first frost
Lettuce and salad leaves	Sow every few weeks until early September	Six to twelve weeks later
Beetroot	Sow until early August	Autumn
Kale	Plant out until late August	Autumn into spring
Spring cabbage	Sow in July and August, plant out in September	The following spring
Turnips and radishes	Sow until early to late September	Four to nine weeks later

French beans are the natural choice, as they’re the next group in the rotation anyway. Kale, spring cabbage, turnips and radishes are all brassicas and jump a step ahead, which is fine as long as brassicas didn’t grow there in the last few years.

If you’d rather rest the bed, sow a green manure such as phacelia or field beans. It holds the soil over winter and adds organic matter when you dig it in. See green manure for winter.

What not to plant after potatoes

Tomatoes, peppers, chillies and aubergines. All are in the potato family. They share blight and potato cyst eelworm, which can build up in the soil.

More potatoes. Even a few volunteer plants from missed tubers keep the problem going. Dig the bed over carefully and pull any that sprout next spring.

Carrots and parsnips straight away. Not because of disease, but because the bed was heavily manured for the potatoes. Fresh manure makes roots fork. They’ll do much better in the bed’s fourth year.

Preparing the bed

1. Lift every tuber you can find. Sift the soil with your hands rather than relying on the fork.
2. If the potatoes had blight, bin the foliage. Blight doesn’t live in soil on its own, but it overwinters in missed tubers.
3. For brassicas, tread the soil firm before planting. For beans and salads, a rake over is enough.
4. Water the bed well before sowing in midsummer, as lifted ground dries out fast.

Check how close you can plant the follow-on crop with the plant spacing calculator. For when the potatoes themselves are ready, see when to harvest potatoes.