Pea Growing, 2022

[flowerbug]

Funny story - in 2019 I planted a cover crop after my tomatoes using a bag that just said "rye". It was perennial ryegrass. It was a lovely lush green lawn the next spring.

Daikons are my favorite late season smother crop.

the deer will come through in the winter here and dig through the snow to find them and eat them. they won't touch them much the rest of the year. hungry enough they will eat about anything. like i can't imagine a cedar tree tasting all that great but they still eat those...

 

[jbosmith]

the deer will come through in the winter here and dig through the snow to find them and eat them. they won't touch them much the rest of the year. hungry enough they will eat about anything. like i can't imagine a cedar tree tasting all that great but they still eat those...

The deer love them but I plant them August 1ish after onions and the deer ignore them til mid October or later. I always leave my cabbage and such for them too and they chew them down to stubs. They don't bother my gardens in the summer or I might have a different opinion of their visits

 

[AMKuska]

That's not always the worst strategy! One of my remote gardens has a crazy seedbed of wild mustard and I often let it grow at least to the blossom stage if I'm done with an area for the year. Just don't use this strategy if you have quack grass or something similar.

The primary weed is this horrible, awful thing that launches its seeds right into your face when you touch it. This last year heavy mulching + peas stopped those cold, and I'm wildly glad to not have to deal with them.

 

[Zeedman]

One of my remote gardens has a crazy seedbed of wild mustard and I often let it grow at least to the blossom stage if I'm done with an area for the year.

Some of the orchards here use (or allow) mustard to grow under the trees, for early weed suppression. It is really pretty when it blooms en masse. The emerging flower heads look like miniature broccoli & are plentiful, so I tried some one year...

I have a natural early-Spring cover crop in the rural garden - Shepherd's Purse. It was originally introduced by contaminated hay, spread during the two fallow years, and covers most of the rural garden in both Spring & early Fall. I normally till it under before it re-seeds, so no big deal. However, the hay I used last year was FULL of dry Shepherd's Purse... so I anticipate a dense outbreak this year in ALL of my gardens. And given the heavy seed load in that hay, that infestation will probably continue many years into the future.

 

[meadow]

Has anyone used crimson clover as a cover crop?

Went out to check the newly planted peas to see if they made it through the deluge. Thankfully the bed looks just the same as before the storm, thanks to the tented plastic. The snap pea transplants look spectacular! 4-6 inches tall, depending on variety.

The neighbor's property has a large amount of standing water. Looks like a pond, and not more than 15-20 feet from my pea beds! Fortunately there is a slight elevation just before the fenceline and our garden is also mounded to improve drainage.

I can see why local wisdom is "peas in by Presidents Day." If you miss the window of good weather that occurs in January/February, then there is no telling when the ground will dry out again.

 

[jbosmith]

Some of the orchards here use (or allow) mustard to grow under the trees, for early weed suppression. It is really pretty when it blooms en masse. The emerging flower heads look like miniature broccoli & are plentiful, so I tried some one year...

I do this just about every year because it LOOKS like a lot of the asian greens that I grow on purpose .. and I love the taste but the wild ones do not do nice things to my belly.

I have a natural early-Spring cover crop in the rural garden - Shepherd's Purse. It was originally introduced by contaminated hay, spread during the two fallow years, and covers most of the rural garden in both Spring & early Fall. I normally till it under before it re-seeds, so no big deal. However, the hay I used last year was FULL of dry Shepherd's Purse... so I anticipate a dense outbreak this year in ALL of my gardens. And given the heavy seed load in that hay, that infestation will probably continue many years into the future.

Weird. We have this but it mostly sticks to the margins and never really seems to multiply from year to year. We have something here that's called Chervil but is different from what you might buy in the store. One farm an hour or so away got it a decade ago in imported hay and it's spread from there. Orchards and the interstate medians seem to be mowed at the perfect time every year to spread it just a bit further. It looks a lot like queen anne's lace but is WAY more invasive, even outcompeting .. believe it or not .. quack grass!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have a huge bag of Cascadia peas, but I actually planted them in the fall to fix nitrogen in the soil. The deer ate all the peas so I didn't get a single one, but they lasted well into December before the last one died. My efforts to fix nitrogen in the soil with peas seem to have failed however, since soil testing revealed low nitrogen in the soil.

For legumes to fix nitrogen they have to have a specific bacteria (microbe) on the roots forming those nodes. If your soil doesn't have those microbes no nitrogen is fixed. If those legumes haven't recently been grown in that soil the microbes probably aren't there. And it has to be a specific microbe for that specific legume. When I set up my raised beds down here I got an inoculant specific for beans and introduced that. Now I get those nodes every year so nitrogen is getting fixed.

Nitrogen in the form plants can use it is water soluble. That means it can leach out of the soil. We get so much rain down here when I get a soils analysis they don't even measure nitrogen. They give a schedule to add nitrogen, different schedules for whatever you are growing.

That's one advantage of green cover crops. Turn them under and you have all that nitrogen becoming available as it decomposes.

 

[AMKuska]

For legumes to fix nitrogen they have to have a specific bacteria (microbe) on the roots forming those nodes. If your soil doesn't have those microbes no nitrogen is fixed. If those legumes haven't recently been grown in that soil the microbes probably aren't there. And it has to be a specific microbe for that specific legume. When I set up my raised beds down here I got an inoculant specific for beans and introduced that. Now I get those nodes every year so nitrogen is getting fixed.

I'm actually enoculating for the first time this year. I don't believe I've ever seen those nodules on my roots, but I didn't pull them up this year to examine it because I wanted the roots to stay in the soil.

 

[Zeedman]

Has anyone used crimson clover as a cover crop?

Only once, when I lived in San Diego. I grew it over winter, mixed with oats, and turned it under when it flowered. My main reason for doing so was for the organic matter, since the soil in that garden was basically hard desert clay. I had access to composted horse manure for nitrogen, which was turned under along with the cover crop. It took a couple years to turn that hard clay into good workable soil.

Re: nitrogen fixation. At present I don't really appear to have a problem with nodulation of legumes, so the organisms must survive in the soil between seasons. Soybean nodulation is especially strong, so those bacteria must be very persistent. Phaseolus beans are healthy, but on the rare occasion when I uproot one, they generally have few nodules. Vignas are the only legume which seems to benefit from inoculation here, so that bacteria must not be as cold hardy.

While the conventional wisdom is that each legume species requires its own specific nitrogen fixing bacterial species, I strongly suspect that at least some of those bacteria are able to adapt to multiple legumes. My evidence of this is what I observed after 2 years of the rural garden being fallow, with only clover available as a host plant. When I planted the garden after that period, with no inoculant on any legume, I examined one plant of every species... nearly all were well nodulated. That was especially noteworthy with beans, which were noticeably more heavily nodulated than usual.

The exception, again, was cowpeas... which under-performed that year. Although I observed some nodulation in 2021, they under-performed in the rural garden again... so I will return to using that inoculant on all Vignas.

 

[meadow]

While the conventional wisdom is that each legume species requires its own specific nitrogen fixing bacterial species, I strongly suspect that at least some of those bacteria are able to adapt to multiple legumes. My evidence of this is what I observed after 2 years of the rural garden being fallow, with only clover available as a host plant. When I planted the garden after that period, with no inoculant on any legume, I examined one plant of every species... nearly all were well nodulated. That was especially noteworthy with beans, which were noticeably more heavily nodulated than usual.

That is intriguing!