Grow Your Own Nitrogen

Growing Nitrogen in the Garden:

Interplant vegetable crops with with peas and beans. In late summerand early fall, thickly plant peas between crop rows or in open spaces. The best time for tilling legumes into the soil is before they bloom. Then, the plants are most leafy and richest in nitrogen.

A cover crop adds nutrients and organic matter to the soil and decreasessoil erosion. If an area of the garden will not be cultivated, in springsow a leguminous cover crop such as alfalfa, fava beans or clover. In earlyautumn, clover or hairy vetch can be sown once crops are harvested. Wherefall crops are still growing, you can sow a cover crop a month or lessbefore the vegetable harvest. This way the cover crop gets a good startbut does not interfere with the edible crop. Do not allow these cover crops to set seed as they can become invasive.

Growing Nitrogen Outside the Garden:

Where garden space is limited, grow vetch, alfalfa, beans or peas alongyard borders or fences as a source of green manure or high nitrogen organicmatter. Leguminous crops can also be grown in parts of your yard insteadof a grass lawn or in a section of the garden that is not being used. Addingonly phosphorus fertilizer (no nitrogen) will favor legume growth overgrasses and weeds. Legumes also grow best in well-limed soil.

Leguminous plants can be mowed, raked, and added to the compost pile,used as a mulch, or turned directly into the garden soil. Plant your vegetableswhere the legumes were planted the previous year(s).