Green Manure

Hmm: six weeks earlier than last time. Having cleared the onions last week, there's a patch of ground that now won't be resown with crops until the spring. Some of it will have spring cabbages, when they're big enough to transplant. In the remainder, I've sown two more rows of salad leaves, and two of radishes, but the rest (about 2–3 blocks) with green manure. This is a winter mix of red clover, crimson clover, mustard, and Italian ryegrass: it should get growing before the winter bites, and will serve four functions.

• Weed suppression: the clovers smother weeds;
• Nitrogen fixing: the clovers' roots take nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it in the soil; the ryegrass helps release it gradually next season;
• Organic matter: the leafy bulk of the plants, and especially the mustard, add organic matter to the soil when they're dug in;
• Soil stabilization: bare soil leaches nutrients in the winter rain, but having the manure roots growing reduces/prevents this.

We'll hoe and dig in the plants in the spring, before the set seed. It didn't work brilliantly last year, I think because we only had the beds finished in time to sow the seed in late October. But with a month to get growing, I hope for greater success.