Good gardens are planned backwards: from what your family eats, through the Mauritian seasons, to what goes in the ground this week. This lesson ties the timing and layout together.
The two-season mindset
Forget spring/summer/autumn/winter. Mauritius has a hot wet season (November–April, cyclones included) and a cool dry season (May–October). Winter is our main vegetable season; summer is for heat-lovers and soil building. Our full month-by-month planting guide, based on FAREI data, is in the Grower Guides — treat it as the timetable for everything in this Academy.
Why rotation matters
Growing the same family in the same bed year after year builds up that family's diseases and pests in the soil, and drains the same nutrients. Bacterial wilt — the great tomato killer of Mauritius — survives in soil for years and hits everything in the tomato family: tomato, chilli, aubergine, potato.
A rotation you can actually remember
Split crops into four groups and move each group one bed forward every season:
- 1Leaf (brèdes, lettuce, cabbage) — hungry for nitrogen
- 2Fruit (tomato, chilli, aubergine, cucurbits) — hungry for potassium
- 3Root (carrot, beetroot, onion, potato) — light feeders, dislike fresh manure
- 4Legume (beans, peas) — feed nitrogen back to the soil
Leaf follows legume (uses the free nitrogen); root follows fruit (cleans up); legume follows root (restores). Keep the tomato family out of any bed for 3 years after bacterial wilt appears.
Interplanting — the space multiplier
Fast crops between slow ones: radish between tomato rows, brèdes under young papaya, coriander at bed edges in winter. The soil stays covered, the harvest doubles per square metre, and pest insects have a harder time finding their target crop among mixed smells.
Write it down
A simple notebook — what, where, when planted, when harvested, problems seen — beats memory every time. It becomes your personal planting calendar tuned to your exact microclimate within two seasons. On the EliteMC farm this same habit becomes the Living Lab's dataset.