Many of us with smaller gardens do not have the luxury of space for crop rotation. Yes, that would be ideal to rotate crops but if you can't, you can't. I have to plant my tomatoes in the same spot each year as there is no where else they can go.

Well there's only so much you can do. Can you add another bed? Can you at least rotate the precise location in your bed?
One thing that will help tremendously is to apply a thick mulch and remove lower leaves--this keeps the soil from splashing on the leaves and transmitting disease.

I've seen people grow tomatoes in the same spot for decades. Just try to get as much organic matter into the soil as you can - a plant growing in rich, healthy soil will resist diseases better than in un-amended soil.

Lots of "do you rotate crops" discussions here and on the tomato forum too that the search will pull up for you. You'll find most all say the same thing - good in theory but but not practical in practice.

Crop rotation is a commercial grower tool. The average home gardener has no way to do it. If you have the space, great. If not then you do what experienced gardeners do. Amend the bed well in fall and again in spring with lots of active compost and let the beneficial organisms and bacteria kill off the pathogens.

That is especially important in your zone where you don't have winter weather kill-off of the bacteria.

Dave

I don't think my parents ever rotated crops. They had a nice size garden. They put cow manure in it every year and had great soil in Northern Pennsylvania. We always had great crops. I don't remember any bugs or them spraying any chemicals on the plants.

Crop rotation can make sense in a large scale farming. I don't know haw one can do that in a small home garden, with beans trellis , summer and fall crops. . ???,
You supply the nutrients and can grow a single crop in the same location for as long as you like.

In an attempt to "rotate" my crops, I just don't plant the exact veggies in the exact spots as the year before. Although it probably does not benefit anything, it seems like a good idea to me to alternate crops so that they remove and replenish different nutrients during different years.

It helps by reducing the amount of "specific" fertilizing that I have to do (e.g. amending the soil with extra of certain chemicals because the veggies grown there consume it all). Heavy feeders like potatoes are moved every year in my garden. This year I grow zukes and squashed in the same spot as last year the it seems that the borer bugs remembered where to find food, sadly ;)

If you have a small space for actual garden bed, but have the potential for buckets and containers, that's another possibility for literally rotating the crops...

No.. Same reasons, even when I had a much larger veggie garden plot, I never really did that.. I made a 40 foot long trellis fence system for beans, its not like I could tear that down and move it around easily.

Comparisons to decades ago is pretty moot, as both invasive bugs and fungal desease has spread tremendously since then. But they at least had it right, mix in the manure and good things happen next year.

But I mostly agree with everyone, each fall my compost pile goes from my summer collected spot to my veggie beds, then augmented with more compost or manures.. this has to be done yearly. I took a year off 3 years ago and my garden the next year was pretty pathetic.