green manure ?

SO as you may know i have my plot back, there is no way i am going to get much planted this season so i am thinking to try green manure?

i plan on planting leeks and broad beans to over winter but not the whole plot.

what is other people thoughts and or experiences with this or shall i just dig now and cover ?

 

Try mustard "green in snow" you'd have some salad leaves to nibble on too then

 

This is the one I have used in the past..

https://www.thegrassseedstore.co.uk/product/winter-green-manure/

Vetch (or Tares) and Hungarian Grazing (or Winter) Rye. This mixture produces the most biomass of any Green Manure crop. Vetch is a nitrogen producing legume and helps build soil fertility. Rye plants quickly develop a large fibrous root system which can draw up to 90% of excess soil nitrogen during establishment preventing the leaching of valuable nutrients from otherwise bare ground during heavy rainfall.


Winter Green Manure from 2 years ago, sown Autumn, partly dug in, in Spring

This covered the ground really well over winter and come spring it can be a couple of foot tall. Strim it down then dig in 3 weeks before planting for the best starter soil for plants.

Since I last used it I have now got a reliable source of farmyard muck that is delivered straight to my plot so I now use that and cover my beds with weed membrane to keep weeds down then late winter I cover with black plastic to stop winter rains waterlogging ground for early spring, it also helps warming the soil a little.

Steve...

 

thanks guys i think i will give it a try as nothing has been grown in it for 2 years other than weeds

 

Good afternoon - I'm new on here, and I have a particular interest in the idea of green manure.

A few months ago, my son took on a 150 square metre allotment and, with a lot of help from me and his mum, he has dug over the entire plot and it is now covered with a mixture of black plastic and weed control fabric.

I think I am beginning to convince him that there is no chance that he will have the time, energy or inclination to make good and proper use of such a large plot.

My idea is that, for at least the first year, he should concentrate his efforts onto no more than one third of the total plot size. I'm thinking that it ought to be possible to set up a crop rotation which would be based around the idea that two thirds of the plot would always be growing some green manure whilst the labour-intensive vegetables etc would be grown on the remaining one-third of the allotment.

I'd be interested to know some other opinions. Thanks, GG

 

It can take a lot of effort to get a new plot up and running. I took over a large plot about sixteen months ago, using the best cultivated third of it for vegetables that year, preparing another third for fruit and the final (and most overgrown) third for vegetables this year. Next year should see the whole plot producing at something like its potential but that will be the second and third growing seasons. I could not have done it all in one go. You can probably cultivate the whole of a small plot almost immediately, but it's best not to try it on a big one.