← Soil fertility H03-04 · Module 4 of 7 · Pages: 19 · Worksheets: 6

Green manures and cover crops

Which plant to sow on an empty bed or field, when, how much seed, how to end it and how much nitrogen it leaves for the next crop

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Green manures and cover crops

In short

  • The rule: no bed stays bare for longer than 4–6 weeks, and above all not over winter.
  • For nitrogen sow legumes (vetch, peas, field beans, clovers); for fast cover phacelia and buckwheat; for winter rye with winter vetch.
  • End a green manure in flower, before it sets seed. From incorporation to sowing fine seed wait 2–3 weeks.
  • Mustard and fodder radish are brassicas: not before cabbage, kale or radishes.
  • A good stand of vetch with rye leaves 8–15 g of nitrogen per m², and the next crop uses roughly half of it.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. What a green manure does
  2. Choosing the plant
  3. Four windows in the year
  4. Sowing step by step
  5. Rotation: what goes before what
  6. How to end a green manure
  7. How much nitrogen is left
  8. On the field and the larger homestead
  9. Common mistakes
  10. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Seed calculator
  • Quadrat test
  • Bed-by-bed plan
  • Crop log
  • Buying seed
  • Green manure calendar

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

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