With winter approaching us here in Australia, we can often have a gap in our fresh produce from our home veggie patch. Not to worry, fill that space with a crop to feed your soil rather than yourself. After all, veggies are very hungry plants and will easily deplete your soil of nutrients and fertility.
Green manuring is a traditional technique used by old-time farmers that has been neglected over the years. With ever increasing demand for food, farmers are under the knife to get something … anything … to market. So having a paddock fallow or non-income generating can be a huge sacrifice. Instead of putting nutrients and organic material back into the soil naturally, many farmers are forced to stay on the treadmill of synthetic fertilisers year after year.
For us at home, it’s a different story. We can take a short break during the cooler months and put in a crop for 6-8 weeks to enrich depleted soils. Green manures are simply a crop that is grown for this purpose. It’s not grown on to harvest, but instead it’s slashed when it only gets to about knee high. Some people dig it into the soil but others will just slash and drop, leaving it on top of the soil where it is and act as a mulch for the next crop.
By adding a bulky crop back to the soil we help build up our topsoil levels. In many of our suburbs development takes a “cut and fill” approach to building houses and apartments. This often takes away the quality topsoil that is best for growing plants in. A clay substrate is all that’s often left. By building our soil we help regenerate this missing topsoil.
There’s a green manure crop that suits all different climates. Choose some varieties that suit your area and also match it to cool season crops if you’re doing it in winter or use a warm season crop if doing it in summer. Some crops you could consider are fenugreek, lupin, oats, subclover, vetch for autumn/winter. Try buckwheat, cowpea, Japanese millet, lablab, linseed, mung bean, French White millet, soybean if you have a green manure in summer.
Most nurseries don’t sell this type of seed. You’ll need to source it from a farm and produce supplier or go online and search some of the organic gardening supplies websites.
Happy Gardening,
The Veggie Lady
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