Growing Green Manure.

Latest Update 26th December 2019.

Green Manure Mix

• Every year I grow a crop of green manure to help prepare the soil for a potato crop.  The manure seeds include field peas, oats and vetch and provide an ideal combination of nitrogen fixing roots and microbe feeding biomass.
• The seeds are supplied with a nitrogen fixing bacterial inoculant to help the legumes in the mix start fixing nitrogen.
• The green manure is planted in autumn and harvested in mid winter.  It's chopped down to the ground and shredded before being returning to the bed as mulch.
• Its covered immediately with a generous layer of compost topped with sugar cane mulch to keep it moist, and is left for 6 weeks to start breaking down.

Details.

• Varieties                                                     Pisumsativum, Vicia villosa, Avena sativa. 
• Garden bed type:                                         Garden Ecobed.
• Minimum Sun per Day:                                 6 hours.
• Plant Spacings (centres)                              Broadcast.
• Weeks to Harvest                                        14 weeks.
• Climate:                                                      Warm Temperate.
• Geographic Hemisphere:                               Southern.

Maintain Healthy Plants

• This blogpage explains how I maintain healthy plants.  It describes how soil is prepared prior to planting, how to regulate the sun's intensity and how to help protect and feed plants through their leaves.

Propagate Plants Efficiently

•  This blogpage explains how I propagate seeds in a purpose built propagator.

Propagation Plan 2020.

• This blogpage tells you when to sow seeds.

Services Plan 2020.

• This blogpage tells you when to make compost and plan other garden/household related activities.

Growing Instructions.

• Sow (broadcast) green manure seeds directly onto an Ecobed's prepared soil in Autumn.  Apply it at the rate recommended by your seed supplier.
• Lightly rake the seeds into the surface and water them in with the bacterial inoculant supplied to ensure nitrogen fixing occurs.

Harvesting.

• Just before the green manure flowers (usually ready by mid June, about 6 weeks before I sow my potatoes), cut it down to the ground with shears.
• Shred it and cover it with manure and mulch to start decomposition and build up a healthy colony of beneficial soil microbiology.

Organic Pest Control.

• Because its a cool season crop, I have never had disease in my green manure.
• High levels of organic material are maintained in the soil using homemade compost, which keeps the worms and beneficial microorganisms very active and protects the plants against soil-borne pests.
• Regular monthly foliar sprays of aerated compost tea boosts beneficial microbial activity on the plants' above ground tissue.  This activity helps protect the green manure against airborne pests.

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