Green manure?

[dolly]

Hello everyone! This is my first time posting.

I recently had all my gardening dreams come true when I moved house into a two-bed terrace with an absolutely massive garden. Its long and narrow, about one hundred yards long!

Anyway, long story short, the top section of the garden will be my vegetable plot, but at the moment its extremely overgrown and I want to get the soil ready for next spring. I've thought about clearing the weeds, digging the soil and planting a green manure, however I'm not sure if its too late in the year.

I'd be grateful for any advice you could give

[richardwil]

Hi

Check out the organic gardening site. They have green manures you can sow as late as October. Try this one http://www.organiccatalogue.com/catalog ... cts_id=388 They also sell a leaflet on green manures.

There is another interesting document at http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/pdfs/in ... eenMan.pdf

Get it dug over and sow some seeds. If they do not germinate you have waster a few pounds, if it works you are benefiting next years veg.

Cheers

[dolly]

thanks very much
i'm gonna give that a go

[Colin_M]

Good idea to get some plants into the soil, even if it is green manures.

One other idea is some beans. Sadly the entries in the Organic Catalogue for Field Beans says Out of Stock. However I've grown these for the last few years and they generally last through the winter.

As an alternative, what about planting a nice lot of Broad Beans or Peas? You can get varieties of either that are suitable for sowing in the Autumn or early winter. Sown in the next month or so, Broad Beans would be several inches high by the really cold weather - not only would they be good green manures in the normal sense, but you'd probably get a good crop from them too.

I don't know what peas would be like for covering a large area, but again I've sown peas before winter for the last 2 years and they got a healthy start then & race away in the Spring.

A word of warning as I don't know ho wlarge your plot is: both peas & beans are loved by mice and if you sow straight into the ground, you may lose a lot. I generally start mine off somewhere safe (greenhouse, garage etc) then plant out once they're a few inches high.

There may be some particularly good varieties to chose, but you should find Aquadulce (beans) or Feltham First (peas) work ok.

[Monika]

I heartily agree about mice loving the field beans, After several years of trying to use field beans as green manure, I have given up on them because they were always eaten by mice (we found the leftovers all over the allotment, particularly in "secret" places like under the rhubarb leaves!). But phaseolus and grazing rye will germinate right into November, providng the weather remains halfway decent. so, I would give it a go, dolly.

[Tel]

Hi dolly,
Planted my first ever manure crop after probs. with the contaminated manure. Planted mustard & it grew & grew! I knew I had to dig it in before flowering but -good grief- I had to trample it down!
It was a hard day's night to turn it in on my two full plots, but thankfully the weather has been dry.
After 5 days, I'm one tired bunny. I will look forward to the benefits(of the crop?)