Brassicas for winter - where to grow? Newbie crop rotation type question

[tortilla]

So it's our first summer of growing and our brassicas have been a great success, much to our surprise - both in terms of them growing well and the DCs enjoying eating cabbages, broccoli and kale! Anyway I was thinking of planting some more cabbages to be ready in the new year but wasn't sure where to put them. Do I stick to an annual crop rotation, so stick them in my current brassica patch, or do you need to rotate each time you sow?

Any thoughts? If in my current patch, should I fertilise with something first (assume soil will have given up lots of its nutrients to the first round of brassicas)?

I put our brassicas randomly dotted round the flowerbeds so the cabbage whites can't find them so easily to lay eggs on them. Brassicas come after legumes in crop rotation as legumes put nitrogen into the soil and brassicas are really hungry!

I wouldn't sow where you've just taken out brassicas, I'd put them somewhere else. It is always a bit of an issue, though, as so many useful crops are brassicas, especially in a smaller garden where you're not necessarily growing vast quantities of potatoes, for example. If you just rotate as far as you can, you should be fine.

Thank you - hugely useful! I won't put them in the current brassica bed - will try plonking them in a random bit of garden that isn't a crop bed and see what happens. Problem is that as it's out first year we only have quite a small veg patch so don't have space to leave for later sowings. Methinks we need to expand our veg patch so we can enjoy cabbages year round :)