Nitrogen Fixation Facts and Chop & Drop vs. Tilling
Vložit
- čas přidán 18. 06. 2017
- In this episode we answer a question from a viewer who asked me to go a bit deeper into a topic we touched on a while ago about nitrogen fixation and then asked us to discuss tilling vs. chopping and dropping when it comes to which method is better for returning nutrients to the soil.
Send mail to:
PO box 131
Marysville, MI 48040
450+ varieties of Heirloom & Non-GMO Vegetable seeds .99/pack, fertilizer, garden tools, blog & More: www.MIgardener.com
Facebook: / migardener
Instagram: / migardener
G+: plus.google.com/+MIgardener
Pinterest: / migardeneryt Twitter: / mi_gardener
Tumblr: tumblr.com/MIgardener Check out our new clothing line! http:www.freshpickedapparel.com
I think the indians and the 3 sisters thing is more about treading water as far as nitrogen. There is probably a small amount of giving of nitrogen that takes place, but at the same time you can grow beans right on top of corn and squash without the beans taking nitrogen away, whereas if you planted tomatoes that close to corn and squash, all 3 would struggle because of the competition for nitrogen. And then of course the 3 sisters has the benefit of the auto-trellising of the corn and the evaporation protection from the squash. I think of beans not as a plan to use to use as a fertilizer, but as a crop you can grow without depleting the nitrogen from the soil.
Two years ago I planted peanuts in between my tomatoes. Me also being in Michigan I I started them indoors from a bag of raw peanuts I bought at Walmart. The peanuts didn't do anything possibly because they got shaded out a lot but the tomatoes grew ridiculously well, the ones closer got crazy big.
Peanuts palnts are very fun to grow btw, the leaves open up like a fan when there is light and close when it gets darker and the peanuts start out as attractive flowers that turn into pegs then force themselves into the ground
You have dispelled some myths I have been hearing for decades. Very educational. Thank you.
Always love all the sciency stuff behind gardening :)
Thank you for the information ..and that is the reason i love your videos....thank you for your time...!!!
Awesome update Luke
Great info.
Cheers.
I've heard you talk entropy before, I kept expecting him to go into the law of conservation of energy here. I believe it applies.
I love that but I fear I would lose too many people.
Very Good thank you...
I enjoy your video, I've learned alot from them, thankyou!..............................Ken
Hi Luke, I love your videos and I have a question for you.
I am preparing a new patch of land and planning to amend it by growing cover crops on it first, then chop and drop and then cover the terminated crop with mulch like hay. This way the fresh cover crops don’t get beamed by the sun and the patch of land can rest like this over winter and I can use it next year. Nowhere on the internet I can find something about covering terminated cover crops with mulch (yeah I know it’s a double layer), so wanted to ask what your thoughts on this are?
Thanks a lot
even with the three sisters a fish rack was placed in the planting hole to provide the fuel for growth.some trees will provide excess N.
I'm working on getting the walking paths between my boxes covered and I'm trying to decide which is better Mulch or pebbles?
Hi, great video! But I have a question. Micro-Clover. Could this be used as a "Living Mulch" both in raised beds (interplanted) and in containers (my fruit Trees are container planted). Would this provide any benefit, as a mulch because of its umbrella styled leaf shape and/or for fixing nitrogen as the clover wouldn't be taken away from the area? Is it worth trying incase I have the right bacteria in the soil/compost? Thanks Mr and Mrs MI Gardener.
cover cropping in fall, winter,spring with a blend of thousands of grass/ beans/peas seeds plus adding mycorrhizal fungi \ rhizobium bacteria then chopdrop in spring then bury with compost is the my favorite way to improve soil /reduce/prevent plant disease.
You've just described my plan for the upcoming Fall and beyond! Need to learn about adding rhizobium though.
you must have filmed this today...I live in Kzoo and we had the same thunder with the same sunny day earlier today-about noon. We never got any rain and the temperature went up as the afternoon wore on.
Danee Kaplan
Saeed Kanuga
Murraay Murraay
Danee Kaplan same in Lansing..
Loud thunder, partly blue skies, no rain.
so weird..I figure it just went north of us.
You can do legume cover crops that are designed for nitrogen fixing, and terminate them just as they are starting to flower and you will get actual positive netgain of nitrogen in your soil.
luke all winter i collected leaves for my garden and i used the core gardening method with these leaves, i even added branches, my question is how much will one big plastic bag of leaves give u in nutrients, over the year, i plan of just adding leaves year after year. and hope for the best.
I don't think chop and drop is necessarily for raised bed that already have good soil. It's more for plants/trees in the ground. And, you grow the plant to be chopped and dropped not for production. So, you grow legumes and turn them in BEFORE they bloom and use the nitrogen. Even on raised beds, use a winter cover crop of clover and turn it in in spring before it blooms and a few weeks before planting. Or grow deep rooted plants to break up the soil, chop the tops and leave the roots or even tubers to degrade.
yea thanx for the tip, yea it's pouring now in Brooklyn NY
Abel Celestin Jr sams in Long Island! So much for April showers!
Yea Louise, a delayed season up here for us, but the recent rainfalls been very good for my garden
@migardner do you think that '3 sisters' is a waste of time then? I'm doing my fist go with that method and now I'm wondering if it would have been better to just do them separately?
There are other bacteria besides rhizobium that can fix atmospheric nitrogen and do not have the same symbiotic relationship with plants. Azotobacter for instance lives in the soil and is able to fix atmospheric nitrogen and releases it in the form of ammonium which is plant available. Tilling soil can cause nitrogen fixing bacteria to stop producing the enzymes necessary to fix N2.
It's all about the rhizobia bacteria. That's exactly why farmers who cover crop turn their crops in just before flowering so the most nitrogen can be turned into the soil.
I'm gonna check out the video but how did you learn or figure out how much nitrogen was actually added
Will you be doing more harvest / preserving food videos this year ?
Absolutely! You bet!
We are growing Siberian Pea Trees. Will thes trees eventually have the organisms to fix nitrogen in the soil? Also, will these organisms show up if you keep planting leguminous crops?
Hi Luke. Thanks for another informative video. Just one question. Would you consider composting and returning to the soil better than tilling? Thanks, Gene.
I would consider it better because you can place it on top of the soil and put it where it is needed most and won't disturb the soil.
what do you think about cover crops
Yep definitely enjoyed it, I always learn a lot with these videos :-)
this video has confirmed a lots of my thoughts based on my practice in the garden.
I purchased your squash vine borer be gone. Can you do a video how to use your squash vine borer be gone? can you talk about the trials you did. squash vine borers kill my squash every year. would like additional information about how you control them and squash bugs in your garden.
I used miracle grow on my strawberry plants and within 3 days all the leaves and berries are dead! Is there anything i can do to revive my plants? I've replanted them in fresh potting soil so theyre not continuing to sit in the miracle grow. Any suggestions?? Thank you!!
Why don't you mulch the ground in the beds so that the leaves do not touch the soil? Is that not important? I find bugs and bacteria get my leaves chewed up if they touch the soil. Thoughts?
what about bacterial supplements for legumes? picture a sour dough ball that you feed and keep in the fridge. can you do something like that with potted legumes to create a culture that you spread in your legume beds to make sure they get the bacteria they need?
With that lettuce example wouldn't the soil have more than what it started with from water or the sun?
Should we not rotate legumes?
I have too much nitrogen in my garden, my radishes have nice leaves and no bulb… any ideas what I can do?
Luke chop and drop is a lot better than tilling. When you till you kill the mycorrhizal fungi.
Can you layer mulch with seeds then chop and drop from there? No dig from the start?
Plants synthesize matter primarily from the sun and the air and just use a small percentage of what is in the soil to create their biomass.Thus they return to the soil more nutrients than what they took out.
Chop and Drop is mentioned a lot here. Farmers do it in the spring and I was told this was because this prevented more nutrients from being washed away. People here are doing it for ground cover too and I see that the stuff being chopped is green. For your home garden is it best in spring or fall or anytime?
Usually it is done when the crop has been harvested and not producing any more food. It has a lot of benefits. It returns the biomass ( green leaf) nutrients back to the ground similar to if you composted it. It can be used as ground cover to prevent the soil from being washed away in heavy rain... so instead of having bare dirt, you have a protective layer until you get something new in that bed.
The one big negative of chop and drop are diseases and pests. If your plants had any insects or diseases before you chopped them, they will have an easy time surviving for awhile on the plants after they are chopped and if you do another planting of the same vegetable, it could help them re-infect your new plants by giving them bridge food.
I personally do not use chop and drop for this reason. You have a greater chance of killing the pests if you bake them in a compost heap for a few months and just use black tarp to cover bare beds until they are planted again ( also keeps weeds away).
I wanted to plant creeping lemon thyme for groundcover. will I still be able to have a garden? and would you recommend growing in pots first and then planting and letting them spread over my backyard naturally? just wondering if you have any experience with those types of plants? I was between Moss and the thyme.
Thyme is a dry belt plant that is not frost hardy; moss is wet belt and frost hardy. Let your climate govern the outcome.
Proof
I have grass and clay. I don’t want to do raises beds but I want to kill all the grass and put food in it. Could I benefit from leaves and cardboard placed over “forked clay” with the grass left in and next spring have the grass be dead? Do I have to pull the crab grass before I cover it with organic matter or will it be killed by the mulching? & if I want to plant a cover crop for this winter, can I sprinkle a tiny bit of coco fiber on the top of the cardboard and leaves to germinate the clover in? That way I have something to protect the microbiology from winter and next spring there will be decomposed organic matter to fix my clay dense soil? That’s what I’m gathering from all the info I’ve got & I don’t have enough cardboard or leaves to do my entire yard but I was even thinking about laying traps down to do the same thing. Please let me know what you think?
It was my understanding that "nitrogen fixating plants" take nitrogen from the air and send it into the roots/soil (as opposed to using nitrogen from the soil)... So if plants were chopped and turned back into the bed (fruits, flowers, and all), wouldn't there be a net positive amount of nitrogen since the nitrogen came from the air during the plants lifetime?
Thank you. Tucking it in soil once plant dies after fruiting or raw plant?
The sooner you tuck it into the soil, the more N you're going to gain. Once it fruits, the plant is now pulling N out of the soil. You get the benefit of adding biomass in general back to the soil in all scenarios.
@@tjancijr thank you
My stepson has a lawn care business and I am wondering if there would be a use in my garden or yard for his leftover cut grass and dead leaves?
Use it as mulch on your plants!
Zee Ter be careful that you aren't using lawn clippings that have been treated with herbicides. Residual damage can be devastating! Same with leaves if they come from near crop or range land. Most likely the fields around them have been sprayed. It is heartbreaking to lose your tomatoes and peppers and not be able to stop it.
Lol, that episode you're referring to that got flak still had 10 to 1 positive to negative upvotes....I think you're fine :)
When I chop and drop I try to put it under the straw I use as mulch.
Luke, I have a small question but I better describe my concern. Back in March I tilled my bed that had years of built up compost in it and I planted some savoy cabbage. This week there have been little brown mushrooms growing in between the spaces of the soil they are not touching the cabbage Are these mushrooms dangerous to my cabbage?
take a picture with your phone and look up photos of dangerous mushrooms and I would remove the mushrooms anyway just in case so no animals eat them and die in your garden
I googled the image and it said it was Panaeolus foenesecii or called "Mower's mushroom". I think I am going to remove them, yeah.
I planted a winter rye crop to fix nitrogen and keep weeds out over the winter (I'm in Massachusetts). I recently turned over the crop and was told to wait about 6 wks before planting heat loving plants, cucumber, squash, etc. My question is I usually add blood meal each year based on my soil test results (the lab recommends nutrients to add). Should I do that now or wait until closer to transplant time, 6 wks? The labs are closed at this time so soil testing isn't an option.
Which lab are you referring to? I'm super interested
What are your thoughts on using multivitamins that also have minerals as an additive to traditional fertilizer? I read something about it and I've been trying it. It seems like my plants have grow significantly more in a shorter period of time.
I think you should take the vitamins and save your urine for fertilizer.It should work better
How about sowing legumes in the months before frost claims them so they get to grow but not flower, but instead die down during winter. Surely that will be a boost to the soil.
What he is basically saying is that unless you have a huge farm, most gardeners have a ton of easy ways to add nitrogen to the soil organically without growing a whole crop just for that small effect. Even a small aquarium or a couple chickens will provide way more nitrogen than you would get from planting beans, let alone even a modest compost heap.
You should probably link videos that are related or you consider relevant. For example, your "How to Get Totally Free 100% Organic Compost". That way, you can promote your old videos.
I use fish fertilizer for nitrogen
How do you get the proper bacteria to the plant?
by either adding it, or by having it in the soil.
the million dollar question.
If you chop and drop, do you literally chop the plant and leave the root, or what would I do with the roots? Thx
MrGarwoodFHN you leave the roots in the ground, they get broken down by microbes to feed other plants
I chop and drop and then chop it into the soil roughly.
What do you think about Ruth Stouts deep mulching gardening?
Interesting, there seems to be a lot of disagreement between farmers gardeners and even scientists on both questions.... Personal bias always seems to infect the truth on either side of these questions. I don't think that tilling destroys the soil as much as the chop and drop people say it does... On the other hand I have seen chop and drop used very effectively. In fact I have seen organic matter decompose into the soil much faster through chop and drop than tilling under. Organic matter does not need to touch the soil in order to break down. If that were true composting wouldn't work at all.
Another thing that confuses me is when you say 1% doesn't matter in a garden bed, but does matter in a farm field.... The thing about percentages is that they are to scale. so if 1% of nitrogen benefits a farm field, then the same 1% benefits a garden in the same exact way... That is why it's a percentage and not a unit of measure. It's the same no matter the size because it is the same portion of the whole, whether it is a square inch or a million acres, it's still 1%.
1% does matter if your soil is as dead as most farmland is. For the home garden we have so much organic matter that is accessible to us that 1% is nothing. It would be a waste of time to be honest.
I guess u could day that
my technique is planting a bean plant with whatever plant always with a variety of microbe having fertilizer, and killing it right when it has a fat harvest of beans and then just begins the next, right when it is more baby flowers, chop it and compost the top, the root nodules, if present because of proper microbe inoculation, as luke stated, will become bioavailable eventually ;)
yayy science, thanks luke, another great video!
I like how the word 'truth' is bandied about by people.. when only THEIR truth is that matters. Not 'The Truth' otherwise, cognitive dissonance sets in and we attack in response, never to change our minds when challenged and shown new evidence. We ALL have our opinions and that's all they are! The facts are the facts (truth) not our interpretation. Look at nature, everything grows together, not separated in boxes for aesthetic or practical purposes. Look to Real Nature and not artificially created, sustained, or fed through external methods. Tilling kills to soil.. fact! Otherwise, nature would till. Cover crops build soil, not organic additions. We all have our egos to support, reputations to protect and subscribers to feed. Namaste
How about a video on comfrey
practice cover crops.
Chop and drop. Cut into small chunks. Cut off roots from weeds that are completely pulled up. Set aside roots for compost tea or just throw away. Aesthetics for quaint simplicity are silly when trying to grow nutritious food!! Silly humans :)
Your Tee is ..distracting, love it..but what is it..rewind video for the third time...sigh