Today we are looking at how to grow green manure crops, and in particular a productive one. We use green manure crops in the vegetable garden, it is an organic way of improving the soil.
Its a technique that works well with all soils, including sandy and clay soils.
Its an organic and environmentally friendly way of fertilising and improving your soil.
Traditional green manure crops include tic beans and annual lupins, however we are making use of a productive winter crop, its a legume and it works well.. You can of course buy green manure crop seeds in bulk if you wish.
This is our broad bean crop, its been busy fixing nitrogen into the soil, we have picked the beans, eaten some and frozen some. And now we are ready to pull out the plants.
We use these as a green manure crop, and it is simple.
Ideally we would have pulled them out before they flowered, however we wanted the beans as well, so although we will not get as much benefit for the soil, we still get a lot.
We pull the plants out, chop them up with a spade and then dig them back into the soil. At the same time we add a little vermicast from the worm farm and a little compost if we have it.
The technique we use is to remove some of the topsoil, add the chopped broadens and vermicide and then cover that up with the top soil.
Ideally you would wait a month or two for the broad bean stems to break down, however you can plant back into the same patch immediately if you need to.
So we have added lots of material that will decompose and add humus, nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil, and its all for free, we also had a great crop of broad beans.
The traditional way is to sow your tic beans or annual lupins, let them grow, but but not flower or set seed, let them get around one high, and simply dig them over into the soil at the end of winter. You can try that as well.
Green manure, a cheap and very efficient way of improving your soil.
Its called manure, because as it breaks down, it manures the soil.