Crop rotation
Crop rotation for onions, garlic and leeks
The short answer
Keep the onion family moving so white rot never gets a foothold. Once it is in a bed, the RHS says it can survive at least 15 years, which makes rotation impractical as a cure. Prevention, not rotation, is what protects you.
Onions, garlic, shallots, leeks and chives share one disease that outlasts any rotation. That changes what rotation is for.
Which crops count
Onion family (Amaryllidaceae)
Chives, Garlic, Leek, Onion, Shallot, Spring Onion, and 7 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Onion white rot sclerotia | At least 15 years (not always that long) | RHS, onion white rot |
What rotation can and can't do
The RHS crop rotation page lists white rot among the diseases rotation helps avoid, while its white rot page says the disease's long survival makes rotation impractical once it is present. Both are true: rotation lowers the chance of building it up; it can't clean a bed that has it.
The RHS stresses not introducing it: avoid bringing in soil, sets or plants from an affected plot.
Where it fits in a rotation
The RHS groups onions, garlic, shallots and leeks together, and in its three-year plan they share a year with peas, beans and roots. Garlic and overwintering onions go in during autumn, so plan their bed before the spring onions come out. See three and four bed plans.
Worth knowing
Spring onions and chives count
Same family. Vercro marks them to wait after onions or garlic.Autumn planting
Garlic in October and overwintering onions in late summer need a bed that hasn't just had onions. See what follows onions.Shallots count
The RHS groups shallots with onions, garlic and leeks.Leeks too
Leeks are in the onion family and share the disease.
What Vercro checks, and what it doesn't
Vercro's taxonomy puts chives and garlic chives with onions even where the catalogue files them as herbs. The rotation check marks the family to wait for about a year after it grew, and says why.
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.
- Onion white rot, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
- Crop rotation, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
- Onions: grow your own, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
- Garlic: grow your own, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
Know where the onions went
Vercro keeps each bed’s history, so the autumn garlic goes somewhere the onions haven’t been.