What are the Benefits of Cover Crops or Green Manures?
Cover crops and green manures are basically the same term. When these plants are alive they are cover crops. When the plants are decaying they are green manures. Green manuring has all the soil benefits of classic composting, plus other benefits: 1. Green manures can fertilize large acres of land cheaper and easier than hauling in tons of finished compost. 2. You can eat the produce of certain cover crops like beans, peas, or radishes. It is harmful to humans to eat compost! 3. The roots of certain legume green manures can supply tons of free atmospheric nitrogen per acre to the topsoil after the cover crop plants are tilled, mowed down, or smothered. Rhizobacteria live inside the legume roots creating a unique relationship that actually converts atmospheric nitrogen into organic nitrogen for the legume to use. This extra nitrogen fixation built up by the rhizobacteria can not be beneficial to other plants near by, or future crops in the soil next season, until that legume is dead and
