Page 25 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2024

nitrogen deficiency especially if it is high in woody material.
Most books and magazines will say to dispose of perennial weeds in the green waste bin or burn them; I will be different! Remember any plant waste from your garden or allotment that you dispose off site is potential organic matter and contains nutrients taken from your soil; you are losing your soil fertility! All that needs doing is to kill the perennial roots and this is easily done by either drying them out completely by leaving them exposed to the weather or drowning in a tin or bucket of water. Leave the weeds for 2 to 3 months and they are usually dead if not just leave longer. Both work well I drown any
Adding leaf mould in greenhouse
growing green manure sown. I have used clover and it has worked very well this year; the vegetable crops have cropped well and I have a good crop of green manure it can be dug in or compost. It means two crops are taken from the soil at the same time
increasingly expensive and will become more so in future years. There is also some evidence that using artificial fertilisers can affect the mycorrhizae in the soil so using organic matter avoids this. If you can get free organic matter, you are getting some free nutrients which is a lot cheaper than fertilisers!
Organic matter improves the soil structure regardless of what type of soil, it opens up clay soils so helps the drainage and holds both water and nutrients in sandy and chalky soils as well as improving silty soils reducing the capping and improving the aeration.
A final point globally the soil carbon store is estimated to be 2.3 times greater than the carbon in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and 3.5 times greater than the carbon in all living terrestrial plants. Soil
is a critical carbon store and grasslands are a major store and hold 34% of the global terrestrial carbon. A well composted or manured vegetable plot will not be
far behind so start applying the organic matter! This article was due out in October so would have coincided with the time
to apply your organic matter to the soil whether a no-digger of digger.
If you know of any sources of organic matter, I have not mentioned please let me know so I can see if there is a local supply.
perennial weeds and pour the liquid and dead weeds onto my compost heap. The liquid could be used as a liquid feed for plants like comfrey or nettle tea and dandelion roots are reputed to be high in certain nutrients. Remember waste not want not!
Look at other waste materials in your local area to see if it is likely to decompose and be suitable organic matter
and results in a higher yield of green manure than if it
is sown after the vegetable crops are harvested.
A couple of additional advantages of using organic matter is that improves the general soil health as it feeds
a large number of organisms from worms down to microscopic nematodes, bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes and protozoa which all help us to grow better plants. Adding organic matter
If you cannot get any of
the above types of organic
matter then produce your
own, no not humanure but
green manure. Depending
on which green manure
is grown they can be sown anytime from March to November; I will not go into detail on growing them as it has been covered
in earlier magazines. One method I have been trialling for the last couple of years is undersowing crops with a green manure. Widely space crops like runner and French beans, peas, sweet corn, some Brassicas are sown or planted and then a low
especially if it is slightly woody adds carbon to the soil and it is then locked in the soil, this reduces the amount of carbon that can get back into the air so therefore reduces our carbon footprint. Most organic material adds some nutrients to the soil
so help to keep the nutrient level topped up and saves having to buy and apply artificial fertilisers which are becoming
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