green manure

[Nature's Babe]

A good idea Johnboy, it makes sense to let the worms do it for you and save your back, their casts then end up in the top soil and they aerate it too. I have quite a large garden so I do move my beans around a bit, just to spread the nitrogen about the soil. What i do is lower the top growth to the ground as a mulch and cover with used chicken straw, by spring the worms have devoured the mulch and the rains have washed the chicken manure into the soil leaving a clean mulch of straw.

[Colin_M]

Every year I manure my permanent Bean Bed. Having removed the trellis I...

I found this quite interesting.

One thing you quite often hear is people who dig a trench on their bean patch and fill it with compostable material, then cover it up again. Supposed to help "because beans are heavy feeders". Sounds like this isn't actually as necessary as people think.

[Johnboy]

Hi Colin,
The method you describe putting uncomposted matter into a trench.
I pursue this method for Peas. This has worked well for me since I started gardening a trick learned from my grandfather. Clive's Peas are supposed to be around 6ft but for me this year, using this method, they were fractionally under 9ft and I had to pick some peas with the aid of a step ladder! I had a phenomenal crop.
I have left sufficient peas for quite a few seed more than I shall require.
JB.

[Mike Vogel]

I grew my beans on a bed where I had emtied the contents of my bokashi bin over a 6-month period. I had a good crop.

I grew my peas on soil "anured" for the previous crop. Although the peas did do better this year because I had time to water them in dry weather, they never got over 2 feet tall. They were mangetouts, perhaps a dwarf variety. I would really like to get tall plants because they will go to make more compost.