Improve soil fertility in your food garden with a green manure crop

Learn how to grow your own fertiliser for your organic vegetable garden and orchard with a regular green manure crop. It is a totally natural way to greatly improve soil fertility, creating a productive and disease resistant organic food garden. This movie demonstrates the simple and very low cost process of using green manure crops. It is presented by experienced organic gardening educator and author, Peter Kearney, founder of www.cityfoodgrowers.com , one of the largest organic gardening resources on the web, which can be localised to any town or city in the Australia, USA and NZ. Become a Gardener subscriber of the site to access all the site resources and interactive tools.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• green manure
• cover crop
• how to improve soil fertility
• organic fertiliser
• organic gardening
• vegetable gardening
• fruit tree gardening

[12peterkk]

I can understand we all have different ways of doing s things with soil fertilisation. My preference is too make all processes simple to apply and that they produce results. I let the green manure crop grow until before seeding, cut it down and leave on soil as a light mulch and within a month plant into it. In this way root areas hold a lot of life in the soil and are not disturbed, protect soil from erosion and fix the nitrogen from the roots. It all breaks down as the new crops are growing

[12peterkk]

The lime with the seeds helps them to germinate, leading to stronger strike rates and more robust plants. Lime is a very important part of a healthy soil. You should not overdo it with lime by adding to much to your soil, but with seeds, I only use it in the seed slurry when planting green manure. Only a very small hand full is all that's needed in a small bucket, say 50gms of lime for enough seeds to cover 100m2

[1994buttons]

Can you grow dreen manure crops the same time as your garden??

[12peterkk]

@1994buttons

If you mean in the same bed, you can. I often include edible plants around the edges of the green manure crop such as lettuce, asian greens or I may have a climber right on the edge such as climbing beans, cucumber, peas, Having said that, I think its important to rest your beds from food growing with a green manure crop.

[barkershill]

@dkulikowski I read recently that CLEAR plastic warms up the soil best and it also gets any weed seeds to start growing so you can then remove them before planting the crop

[JBC814]

The green manure should be covered with soil and tilled in later. It's more important to mix it into the soil, I believe, and not leave it exposed. Bacteria and fungi thrive in a soil with a lot of mulch, wood chips, compost, and shredded leaves tilled in every season. Wood chips are very helpful for aeration as well, and provide plenty of decaying matter to feed the bacteria and fungi. Fertilize with chicken manure, sea minerals (seaagri(dot)com), and fresh sea water from the beach.

[bulleuston76]

Very well conveyed! I've never tried the lime mix but I'll definitely give it a go. Thanks for the video.

[auzziegardener]

looks great mate i live in brisbane too

[dkulikowski]

Very interesting, I am in Wisconsin, USA, zone 5. It is October, getting ready for a cold Winter. I have a raised bed, 8'x10', my only veggie bed I can have. What do you suggest for a cover crop in 30 degree F, so I will be able to grow in April 2012?In April I warm up this bed using black plastic for a month, is the o.k? Or am I killing the good guys? This method of yours is VERY NEW to me. I need EASY & INEXPENSIVE. Hope to share YOUR KNOWLEDGE with other earth friendly gardeners.Thank you.

[shephenkel]

What is the purpose of the lime?

[dillonbrownie]

Thank you