Any gardener can utilise the same strategy that organic gardeners use to enrich the soil with much-needed nutrients: green manure. Choosing the appropriate plants to be buried in the soil of your garden after the growing season is all that is required.
Even in the off-season, when your herbs and veggies aren’t growing, you can plant green manures. These plants are an excellent and organic approach to sustaining the fertility of your soil over time.
See also: Gardening soil: A guide on different types of soil, price and gardening tips
What is green manure?
Green manure, also known as a cover crop, is plant debris that has already wilted or been uprooted and is placed into the soil. It is afterwards used as mulch for soil improvement. The green undecomposed substance is another name for green manure.
After the herbs have been collected in the fall, green manures can be sown. During the growing season, you can also plant your green manures as a part of your crop rotation. You can use green manure as a cover crop to prevent the rich topsoil from being washed away by planting it to grow throughout the fall and winter seasons.
In the early spring, gardeners turn or till the green manure crop into the ground. This is done when the soil is dry enough not to compress while you are working with it but is still too cold to plant in. If at all possible, avoid walking on or attempting to deal with moist dirt.
If your soil is thick, such as clay, you should incorporate green manure late in the fall so that it can break down during the winter.
Source: Pinterest
See also: Green Manure Crops
Green manure: How should it be planted?
Green manure should always be planted just before it starts to rain. Throughout the germination process, the seed must not become dry.
You can broadcast (or spread) the seeds evenly by hand for a little herb garden. Before spreading, mix the seeds with dirt or sand to give you greater control over where they go. Rake the dirt after you’ve dispersed the seeds to ensure that they are suitably covered for germination. In the absence of rain, water sparingly.
Green manure: Types
Green manure can be classified into two categories:
Legume
These are roots-equipped plants that cooperate with soil microbes to fix nitrogen from the air, a process known as nitrogen fixation. An additional aid to the procedure is an inoculant or treatment media that makes the legumes more effective.
If applied, the inoculant, which is sold in powder form at garden centres, dramatically raises yields. Soybeans, lettuce, alfalfa, peas, beans, lupins, and clover are examples of legume green manures.
Non-legumes
These are generally used as cover crops. They also add organic matter to the soil to improve its fertility. They consist of phacelia, turnips, rye, chicory, oats, barley, mustard, and buckwheat, among others.
Green manure: Uses
The uses of green manure crops can also be used to classify them.
- Cover crops are grown on the soil to cover it and stop erosion. Vetch, Sirius peas, oats, clovers, winter rye, and lentils are a few of them.
- Break crops, such as alfalfa, mustard, brassica, and rye, disrupt the life cycles of pests and illnesses.
- Leguminous plants called “nitrogen-fixing crops” are cultivated to increase the amount of accessible nitrogen in the soil. Beans, vetches, clovers, peas, soybeans, lupins, and alfalfa are a few examples.
- Crops that conserve nutrients reduce nutrient loss and increase nutrient levels in the soil, as their name implies. They consist of red clover, buckwheat, oil radish, and ryegrass.
- Smother crops, such as winter rye, buckwheat, yellow sweet clover, and oil radish, are produced to outgrow weeds in terms of growth.
Source: Pinterest
What are some green manure crops?
Green manure crops serve as a great way of increasing the fertility of your garden soil and the health of your plants. These crops can help in boosting the yield of your garden without increasing the use of expensive chemical fertilisers. Some popular green manure crops include:
- Beans
- Peas
- Carrot
- Peanuts
- Clover
- Vetch
- Fenugreek.
- Buckwheat
- Winter rye
- Comfrey
When to sow green manure crops?
Green manure is primarily a winter/autumn crop owing to its ability to help reduce the effect of soil erosion caused by winter rains and enable the roots to grow deeper in the soil. This can help with aeration and breaking up heavy soil like clay. However, green manure also offers the same kind of benefits in the summer as the leafy foliage serving as the defence against the drying effect of wind and sun. Essentially, green manure crops are beneficial throughout the year. Depending on the needs of the crop you are planning to plant, the best time to sow will vary.
Green manure: Advantages
1. Leaching and erosion prevention
Green manure, or cover crops, protects soil from the elements by covering it. Plant bodies protect the soil from intense rains and the hot sun, preventing erosion. Roots cling to soil particles and keep them in place. Additionally, green manure reduces the amount of nutrients that leak into the environment. As the crop is buried in the earth, it takes nutrients into their bodies and seals them there.
2. Providing the soil with nutrients and organic matter
Key plant nutrients are present in high amounts as a result of using green manure. Clover and vetch, two leguminous green manures, may draw nitrogen from the atmosphere and add it to the soil. For instance, nitrogen is a crucial ingredient that encourages the wholesome growth of crops that will be sown later.
3. Getting rid of weeds
Many farmers prefer green manure because it can keep weeds in check. Green manure accomplishes this by interfering with the life cycle and growth patterns of weed plants. Additionally, they outcompete weeds for nutrients, water, and space. Additionally, certain species have the ability to emit chemicals from their roots that, through a mechanism known as the allelopathic effect, prevent weeds from growing and seeds from germinating in the soil.
4. Providing pollinator habitat
Bees and other pollinators can obtain the necessary nutrients from the flower nectar and pollen of many frequently grown green manures. For instance, the yellow mustard flowers, the yellow, blue, or white lupin blooms, and the white, pink, and red clover blossoms all draw pollinators like butterflies and bees.
5. Enhancing the structure of the soil
By incorporating organic matter into the soil, green manure considerably strengthens the soil’s structure. Such organic material combines soil granules and forms soil aggregates. The development of pores by the clusters of the larger, enhanced particles enables proper soil aeration, nutrient distribution, and water retention.
Green manure: Disadvantages
1. Harbours snails and slugs
Snails and slugs find the ideal environment for breeding in a green manure crop. Since they will multiply, some of your crops, including vegetables, may eventually be impacted.
2. Time intensive
Farmers and gardeners must wait up to a month after thinning and rotating their green manure crops before planting a new crop. This is true because some plants are allelopathic, which means they naturally release poisonous compounds into the soil to prevent the development of new plants.
3. Water utilisation
Like every other crop, green manure crops use moisture. They will consume all moisture that is available, which would have otherwise been conserved during fallow if moisture is scarce in a particular area. If moisture is not a limiting factor, less moisture is absorbed by green manure crops than is used by mature crops.
4. Costs of establishment
There is a price associated with growing crops for green manure. It shouldn’t be higher than what is needed to grow other crops. Additionally, it shouldn’t go beyond the advantages for the soil and nitrogen. If it happens, the farmer or gardener will be in the red since it will cost more to prepare the ground than it will grow marketable products.
5. Limits on rotation
An additional crop in the cycle is a green manure crop. Your land won’t have enough time to recover if it’s planted right away after your main crop is harvested. Additionally, in order to reduce disease issues, you will need to limit the amount of land you utilise to produce other legume crops.
FAQs:
How to pick the right green manure for planting?
You should choose your green manure depending on when you want to plant seeds and the type of soil you have.
When should my green manure be turned into soil?
Early spring is the time to incorporate the green manure crop into the soil. This is done when the soil is dry enough not to compress while you are working with it but is still too cold to plant in.
How can green manure provide the soil with nutrients?
A fantastic technique to enrich the soil with nutrients is to use green manure, often known as a cover crop. Planting a crop specifically intended to be integrated into the soil to boost its fertility is known as green manure.
