If your garden soil is poor, consider giving it some help. One way to amend garden soils organically is to plant a green manure cover crop. It requires minimum effort.
For 4,000 years prior to the factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed.
Americans have never been quite so industrious. Unlike the Chinese, our culture treats the organic matter we should be putting back into the soil as waste material, shipping it off to landfills or flushing it down the toilet.
Even small gardens will benefit from the use of cover crops, or “green manures”. Tilling, weeding, harvesting and foot traffic of most home gardens tends to destroy soil structure.
Planting cover crop is an easy way to revitalize the soil, and help soil tilth and subsequent plant growth.
Cover crops are planted in vacant space and worked into the soil after they grow instead of being eaten. They provide a number of advantages to the otherwise wasteful use of space during your garden’s off-season.
Cover crops help to retain the soil, lessen erosion, and decrease the impact of precipitation on the garden by slowing the runoff of water. And,They also reduce mineral leaching and compaction, and suppress perennial and winter annual weed growth. The top growth adds organic matter when it is tilled into the garden soil.
The cover crop’s root system also provides organic matter and opens passageways that help improve air and water movement in the garden soil.
If sections of the garden are free during late spring or early summer, clovers can be planted
Although many people view them as weeds, white and red clovers are actually a beneficial kind of plant called a legume.
Plants need nitrogen to promote healthy growth, but only legumes are capable of capturing nitrogen from the air and converting it into a usable form for other plants.
The clovers are quite literally fertilizing your lawn for free. Clover is also one of the most popular foods for bees, who also contribute to the health of your garden by pollinating your plants.
Red clover is an adaptive cover crop, tolerating shade, acidic soils, and poor drainage. Nitrogen-fixing red clover is low growing, so you can dig it in with a spade rather than a tiller.
White clover has a low growth habit, provides rapid cover, fixes nitrogen, is a prolific seed producer, and reseeds well.
Here is my BIG SECRET: rabbits don’t touch a THING if they have red clover to nibble on. They LOVE it. It grows like mad and they eat it like mad, so I make sure that I have some all over the place.
At one time, decades ago, it was considered prestigious to have a clover lawn, according to master gardeners at the University of Minnesota. Aside from providing a cushioned surface, clover enriches the soil by absorbing nitrogen from the air.
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Yours truly, Polly – Organic Gardener
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