GREEN MANURING

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1934, Page 18

GREEN MANURING

The absolute necessity of soil'humus for the successful growing of plants is geneially known, and with the scarcity of stable manure, which used to supply this need, other means have to be found to replenish it as it is used up. ' The ordinary-garden is practically under crop from year's end,to year's end, the soil being continually called upon to fee.d the various plants, and, whereas in Nature the drain is largely supplied by natural decay which ,is allowed to fall and decompose, in the cultivated garden this is cleared away for the sake of tidiness.

The modern method of supplying humus is by "green manuring,^' i.e., by growing a crop of some quick-growing plant and turning it under. Everybody should believe in this form of fmanuring, for which any quick-growing plant may bo used. Oats, mustard, rape, peas, beans, vetches, or lupin are all suitable,, but blue lupin or other leguminous plant is best, as this class of plant helps materially to replenish the nitrogen in tho soil by means of "tho nodules on'the roots. Most, of us know that plants of 'the pea family have on their roots little nodules,' and it is these nodules that ar© crammed 'with tho living bacteria • which have the power of fixing the 'free nitrogen of tho air. Tho pea family live, in a kind of partnership with the bacteria, and are able, by the help of these creatures, not only to feed on the iutrogen of the air themselves, but,to leave a store of it, in the soil for the .use of plants in the following season. Leguminous; plants for green manuring should be sown in late summer or autumn and dug in when the crop has reached a certain stage of growth or when in flower. Lime is essential for all leguminous plants. v To' encourage rapid growth it -is good' practice to give .the ground a dressing of superphosphate before sowing'it down.