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Re: Green Manure

Duncan wrote:-

> To get a thread going for November....
> 
> I plant on using Winter Rye to enrich my soil for spring. Do any of you
> apply a green manure in the fall to enhance your soil?  What do you use
> and why. I tilled up my lawn to grow pumpkins and now the winter rye is
> growing. My wife thinks it is ugly to see a pile of mud in the back yard
> but we made a deal.  I build a play house for my daughter and I get the
> lawn to grow pumpkins. She still has some of the lawn.....

Hi Duncan

Funny you should mention that, I'm trying Green Manure (GM) in earnest for
the first time this season. I've had a go in the past with mustard and was
quite impressed, so this year I decided to have a proper go.
I'm trying out:-

Grazing Rye, (Secale cereale);
Phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia);
Winter Tares (Vicia sativa);
Winter Field Beans (Vicia faba)
Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum graecum)

I bought some Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) but was too late to sow it
this year.  

The Grazing Rye is very lush on several beds, but did not do well on a
couple of others. I think this due to an unusually warm dry autumn this
year. The germination rate was poor on the beds that were seeded at the
height of the dry period. The beds seeded before and after are doing fine.
So I think the answer is to keep the beds watered, which is not something
you expect to do in September/October.
The Grazing Rye is supposed to be good for soil texture as the root system
of the plant is very extensive. It's not a nitrogen fixer but it is very
hardy. Tough to dig in though.

The Phacelia is very pretty. Ferny foliage giving good ground cover and
winter hardy. Not a nitrogen fixer. Germination was good. If you let it
flower the bees are said to love it. I may well sow some in spring in a
quiet corner to keep the bees happy. Shouldn't be hard to dig in as the
roots are quite small.

The Winter Tares was slow to germinate. It took a while to grow up to a
decent size so there is some weed growth between the rows. It is a Nitrogen
fixer though, so that will be useful. Not too difficult to dig in,
apparently. I will find out in due course.

The Field Beans are doing very well. They are about six to eight inches
high so far. They are also not very fast to get going initially so weeds
are a bit of a problem, but being beans they are good nitrogen fixers. Big
roots, will be harder to dig in but the bulk of the foliage coupled with
the nitrogenous nodules should be good.

I grew a little patch of Fenugreek which, although it is said not to be
hardy, has survived a few nights of mild frost so far. It is a questionable
nitrogen fixer, probably not in the UK without some sort of bacterial
inoculum, which I did not have. But it is only a small patch just as a
trial. It is not very tough looking so shouldn't be a problem to dig in. 

I'll try the Buckwheat next year, when I have some spare soil and the
weather is warmer.

I want to try various Clovers as a ground cover under crops like Brassicas
next year. It is supposed to be good for weed suppression and nitrogen
fixation at the same time. Brassicas are so nitrogen greedy that this
sounds like an ideal combination. Has anyone tried this?

The really nice thing about GM in winter is that the soil still looks nice.
Most of the plots on our allotment site look brown and bare now, but mine
are green and flourishing.

I will be listing Green Manures with cultural details, etc. on my web page
fairly soon. I'm not ready yet but it is coming along nicely. Watch this
space. :)

Regards
Stephen

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Stephen Griffiths
Barfield Allotment Association
Whetstone, London. England.
stephen.griffiths@dial.pipex.com.
 http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/xpz05/
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