The practice of rotating the types of crops grown in a particular area each season is called crop rotation.
Crop rotation means growing different crops in the same soil according to a planned sequence. A farmer might follow wheat with legumes, then a root crop or cover crop. Changing plant families helps prevent one crop from repeatedly exhausting the same nutrients and can interrupt the life cycles of specialized pests, diseases, and weeds.
Legumes such as peas, beans, clover, and alfalfa are especially valuable because bacteria in their root nodules help fix atmospheric nitrogen into forms plants can use. The classic Norfolk four-course system, popularized in 18th-century Britain, rotated wheat, turnips, barley, and clover and helped support the Agricultural Revolution.
Crop rotation is often confused with intercropping or companion planting. Those methods grow multiple plants together at the same time, whereas rotation changes what occupies the soil across seasons. Fallowing, by contrast, leaves land uncultivated for a period rather than switching among crops.