Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Eva <eva@whitepineisland.com>]

My understanding is that the nitrogen isn't available to crops until the plant & nitrogen fix nodules break down.

 Patricia Ruggiero wrote:

Arzeena wrote:
 
  

We planted crimson clover this year after harvesting our garlic. It
grew well in the late summer and started to die back in the winter but
our winter was so mild that it didn't die completely and it's now
totally green again. We're going to try to keep it and see what
planting into it with kale & Swiss chard transplants is like. We'll
probably have to mow it down once before we do. If anyone else has any
tips on other veggies that you can transplant into a living mulch, I'm
all ears.
    

Some years back, when husband and I were first figuring out cover crops, we
tried a clover (we can't recall what type; husband says maybe "sweet"
clover), into which we set our kale transplants.  Our idea was that the
clover would fix N, and that would be good for the kale.

The clover out-competed the kale, quickly and easily, and we lost the entire
kale bed.  

In fact, we have never again tried *living* mulches.  We do grow cover
crops, but we make certain they're *dead* before we plant into them.

Pat

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