Autumn is a good time to plant a green manure crop in your empty vegetable plot. Green manures are sown deliberately to be dug back into the soil before they flower. This helps improve fertility, suppress weeds, stop leaching and soil errosion and helps condition the soil.

Empty Plot Tips

• Clear up debris and weeds and make the plot tidy.
• Test soil and add lime to prevent it becoming too acid and reducing future crops.
• Leave pea and bean roots to rot down.
• If soil is heavy dig and leave large clumps for the frost to break down
• Replan paths and cropp rotation for next year. Do not walk on wet ground.
• Incorporate rotted compost.
• Mulch the asparagus bed.

Green Manuring Tips

• Ryegrass can be sown in  September to grow all winter before being dug in during spring to release nutrients as it rots.
• Fast growing radish or mustard sown before mid-September can be incorporated in October or their frosted remains left as a mulch.
• Legumes such as beans and vetch can be sown in autumn for incorporation in spring. Crops of lupins, red and sweetclover  and peas fix more nitrogen from nodules on the roots
• Allow two – three weeks after digging in before replanting or sowing fresh crops in spring.
• Use green manures as a supplement to other fertilisers and humus
• Ideally dig in before they flower and become woody as then they take longer to decompose.
• Organic green manure seeds are available but slightly more expensive