Crop rotation
Crop rotation for peas and beans
The short answer
Move peas and beans on each year, and follow them with the cabbage family. Leave their roots in the soil when you clear them. Don't put peas or beans back where peas or beans have just grown: root rots build up where they are grown repeatedly.
Peas and beans have the friendliest reputation in rotation: they leave nitrogen behind. That is true, but smaller than the folklore, and they have a soil problem of their own.
Which crops count
Pea and bean family (Fabaceae)
Asparagus Pea, Broad Bean, Dwarf French Bean, French Bean, Mangetout, Pea, Runner Bean, Sugar Snap Pea, and 17 more entries in Vercro's catalogue.
In Vercro's rotation check: Medium: Vercro marks same-family crops to wait for about a year after this family.
What lasts in the soil, and for how long
| Problem | How long it can last | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Pea and bean root rots | Build up where peas and beans are grown repeatedly | Vercro's curated taxonomy (not independently checked) |
What rotation can and can't do
The RHS advises cutting pea and runner bean plants down after harvest and leaving the roots in the ground to boost soil nitrogen. Garden Organic adds a caution: when beans are grown on to pod, the developing seeds take much of that nitrogen, which is why green-manure field beans are dug in before flowering. After a crop you have eaten, the gain is modest.
So peas and beans help the next crop a little. They don't replace compost or feed.
Where it fits in a rotation
In the RHS plans, peas and beans come before brassicas, grouped with onions and roots in the three-year plan. Green manures from the same family, such as field beans and winter tares, belong with the legume group too (Garden Organic). See three and four bed plans.
Worth knowing
Broad beans, peas, runner and French beans
All one family. A bed after broad beans is not the place for French beans.Cut, don’t pull
Leave the roots in (RHS).Field beans as green manure
Count them as legumes when you plan the next crop."Follows well"
Vercro uses this for hungry crops after peas or beans within about a year: the cabbage, squash, potato and grass families.
What Vercro checks, and what it doesn't
When a bed that held peas or beans is planned within about a year, Vercro marks hungry crops as following them well, and marks more peas or beans to wait, with the reason.
No three-year chart
Vercro checks a bed's own history when you plan it, and can name a free bed where a family hasn't grown. It won't plan next year's rotation for you, and it doesn't draw a fixed multi-year chart, because a year of garden records can't support one.
Keep going
Where this comes from
Crop windows, growing times and plant families come from Vercro's own curated crop catalogue, the same data the Vercro app uses. Where a published source says something different, we show both rather than choosing the convenient one. Reviewed 19 September 2026.
- Peas: grow your own, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
- Runner beans: grow your own, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
- Field beans (green manure), Garden Organic. Read 19 September 2026.
- Crop rotation, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
Keep the bean beds moving
Vercro remembers where the peas and beans grew, so the cabbages can follow them.