Green manure and pea weevil

[Monika]

For the last two years pea and bean weevil attacks have grown tremendously during spring on our allotment and I am wondering if the winter tares (which we grow as green manure) help the weevils to overwinter. Anybody got any thoughts on that? This winter we are only using winter grazing rye on the allotment and the tares in the garden where we don't grow any peas or beans.

[Mike Vogel]

Speaking purely from ignorance, Monika, and possibly ill-remembered bits of reading, I'm inclined to ask you where you sow the winter tares and what you follow them with. The general recommendation is to sow a winter green manure of one family after the summer crop of the same family. E.g. if you've just harvested brassicas from plot A, sow mustard there, as mustard is a brassica. But don't grow brassicas AFTER the mustard, as you will be in danger of club-root, cabbage-fly, etc.

Now, if you use winter tares universally, they will benefit the following crop of brassicas wonderfully, but it would be wise to avoid sowing peas and beans where the tares have been, as, being of the same family, they'll be susceptible to whatever infests the tares. Hungarian rye, however, would be a good GM to sow before beans; you'll get bulk and, we hope, no pea weavils.

I like to use mustard in the autumn after brassicas and before spuds; apparently this encourages eelworm to mature early and fly off before the late spuds begin to form their tubers. Alternate the mustard in rows with Hungarian rye; then, when the mustard dies in the cold, the rye will still be producing stuff for digging in in spring.

I use phacelia extensively where roots or beans will grow. In fact, on some plots, e.g. tender veg, I follow a winter GM with a spring one, producing a double dose of nutrients and bulk. Fenugreek is another good one for the summer [say, after you've lifted early spuds]; it may fix nitrogen, but generally not in this country, but you'll get a lot of bulk. I'm going to try it next year, on the advice of someone in this forum.

GardenOrganic [the new name for HDRA] does a useful pamphlet on Green maunres, but a lot of what I do is derived from it rather than specified in it, if you see what I mean. I can say this: the only time I've had success with dwarf beans is when I sowed phacelia one autumn, which overwintered and produced a massive amount of bulk for the soil during the spring.

Good luck

mike

[Mike Vogel]

Johnboy has just indicated an error in my last posting. I should have said Wireworm, not eelworm, which JB points out to be a nematode and therefore a creature which doesn't have a breeding cycle like the click beetle [wireworm]. Thanks JB.
mike

[Monika]

Many thanks for your comprehensive reply. I do follow what you have suggested, i.e. growing winter tares AFTER peas and beans, but as the plots are adjacent to the other plots, I assume they just hop across! Unfortunately, we don't usually have long enough gaps between summer crops (short season here!) to try summer sown green manure. We also have much trouble with pheasants and partridges eating the seeds, so everything has to be nettes.