Inoculant For Peas And Beans

Nitrogen is one of the most important food sources for our plants.  Plants are built to draw nitrogen from the soil/water where it exists in several forms – some available for plants to use and others not.  But floating above their oblivious green heads there’s an entire world of nitrogen.  About 90% of the earth’s nitrogen exists in the atmosphere and not in the soil.  In fact the atmosphere is just about 79% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and eleventy billion percent filth.

Nitrogen in the soil comes from a few nicely evolved systems.  Most comes from a slightly freaky-sci-fi-slightly-symbiotic force called fixation.  In fixation, several species of bacteria can absorb atmospheric dinotrogen gas which they then convert into ammonium.  Ammonium is structurally NH4 and in this form, plants can (and happily do) grab the nitrogen bit.

Happy bacteria and stuff do a few other things in the soil to produce or make use of nitrogen via nitrification and mineralization.  Mineralization happens when stuff breaks down in the soil and the organisms turn that nitrogen into ammonium and nitrification is sort of the reverse process.

The cool thing is that all of these happy little bacteria guys sit around in the soil with specialized jobs.  Many plants require the nitrogen to be absorbed via water, but legumes like peas and beans have a deal with the bacteria.  They let the bacteria live in nodules within their root structure, they provide the bacteria with the fuel to fix nitrogen right from the air and in turn the legumes draw on the nitrogen.  It’s a contained fertilizing system!  (Incidentally, reproducing this system in a factory requires tons of energy… it’s why making fertilizer blows.)

So, if the system occurs naturally why are we told to use inoculant on our legumes?  And is the inoculant “natural”?  It sounds sinister.

Inoculant is usually a powdery substance and it’s nothing more than a grouping of a specific type of nitrogen-fixing bacteria.  Each kind of legume will require a certain type of bacteria.  For peas it’s usually R. leguminosarium.  Beans need R. Phaseoli.  Lasagna needs Chef Boyardeeoli.  These bacteria are natural.  I have seen or heard of some kinds of peas and beans that are pre-treated with inoculant and that sounds a little unnatural to me.  It’s a bit like seeds that are pre-treated with chemicals to resist rotting or freezing or being good for you.

Using an inoculant that is right for your crop is a good idea.  It’s not a mandatory, but it helps ensure that your plants will be boosted along with the right bacteria.  These buggies exist in the soil, but sometimes not where you are planting or perhaps not in a big enough way.  Using it is easy.  You can make a slurry out of the powder by adding some water, drop your seeds in, coat them and plant them within 24 hours.  If you’re curious, you’ll know it worked later by taking a look at the roots.  If they’ve got gnarly looking white nodules, that’s your little nitrogen factories hard at work!

Incidentally, if you’re using an inoculant, don’t add your own nitrogen fertilzer to your plants.  Peas and beans, like me, are gorgeous, productive and truly, truly lazy.  If you give them an easy buffet of food, they won’t work to create their own.

Happy inoculanting!

Filed under: Uncategorized , legume inoculant, peas inoculant

My Favorite Search Terms Part 2

A repeating effort to chronicle the odder terms people use to find my silly little blog.

Term from January 22:  Blindfolded honey on tongue.

I’m not one to judge.  Whatever floats your boat so long as no tongues were harmed with the addition of blindfolds.  And I don’t want to disappoint anybody who finds themselves on this blog no matter what terms they used to find it.

So.

Blindfolded honey on tongue:

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Garden Plan 2009

Great planners of history…

I don’t know.  Military guys?

Me?  Not so much.

But!  Even a chronic non planner like me knows that a great garden plan makes for… great garden confusion when you actually try and plant it as you wrote it.

Still.. without further adieu my 2009 plan.

I have other crops to add, but this is basically it.  I’m trying to indicate now where I will rotate in and out and how my greens will be staggered.  On first glance you might think “Good lord!  That’s a lot of peas!”  And you’d be right.  But I love em!  They grow nicely, die off and then make room for more stuff!

Filed under: garden design , garden plans

Leave It To Google To Do Hardiness Less Hard

Cool blog here called My Brown Thumb that pointed me in the direction of a Google-based hardiness mapper.

I’ve always been a zone tweener.. not quite 6a, not quite 6b, but this places me pretty firmly in 6A.

Filed under: Uncategorized , hardiness zones

Extending The Season

So a new blog via the Mark Bittman Bitten NY Times column.  In this column, a Kansas gardener describes how she and her husband have their garden producing throughout most of the year with the exception of December, January and part of February.  I’m not sure I could get away with that in my zone, but I’d love to be better about successions this season and I’d love to start early and end late.

There’s a cold frame in my future!

Mary Mary quite contrary how LONG does your garden grow?

Submit your tips for extra long seasons…

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Time to get started!

Ah!  My goodness.  The last post was… Halloween?  And it was about silly search terms?  Geez.  So much has happened that I hardly know where to begin.

First, we knocked the house down completely and had planned to use the new earth to plant nothing but beets and celeriac.  But as it turns out we’re situated on an old indian burial ground.  The ancient spirits were displeased I think mostly with the idea of all that space being used for celeriac.  We appeased the spirits by offering our last born child.  They didn’t want him which was nice, but they totally dug our commitment to appeasement.  So, the house is back up and the garden is the same size.  And no celeriac is planned.

Second, it started snowing around Halloween and hasn’t really stopped.  The nice thing was that the snow and ice created an automatic irrigation system for us.  The bad thing was that that irrigation system started at our roof and flowed through our ceilings and walls.  But man we sure can catch a lot of water in buckets, pans and tupperware.  We feel a new connection with the earth as a result of this reduce, reuse, recycle plan that was forced upon us right around Christmas.

Third… well there is no third.

Garden planning is underway.  I am simplifying quite a bit this year and going for long-term, high-yield kinds of things.  The loss of tomatoes last year broke my spirit a bit and I’m taking a break from them this year.  But, the seeds are ordered for all the other stuff!  I use Pinetree seeds in Maine.  I like them.  I won’t be starting any seeds this year which makes me very sad, but it’s just not practical with the kids.  I don’t have a good spot to get them going that won’t be at kid central.  So, i’ll plant everything i can with perhaps a coldframe for some stuff.  The rest of the crops I will fill in with greenhouse starts (peppers… and probably a few tomatoes for containers, cucumbers, broccoli).

Now if you aren’t reading Skippy’s Vegetable Garden regularly you should.  And here’s a practical reason to do it.  She’s built a nice HTML planting calendar that you can personalize.  I find these kinds of things very handy especially at this stage where I am planning.  It’s especially useful for you seed starters!  She’ll add fall crops later.

Hope things are going well for all the gardens out there!  Let me know what you’ve got cooking for the upcoming season…

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