working the system

before i planted the potatoes in the bed in the top photo i turned eighty pounds of compost into that bed to add things like nitrogen and phosphorous and potassium to the soil so the plants could utilize them to grow and set the tubers that i harvested...through the proxy of those plants i mined those minerals and chemicals for my own use...almost everything humans do is deleterious to the environment including the way we grow food...if i keep planting in this bed without returning some of the elements that make it fertile my plants will eventually do poorly...so after harvest i went in and planted some green manures to try to make things up to the soil...the fourth and fifth photos are from last autumn and they are of nodes on the root system of some cowpeas ( vigna unguiculata )that i used as a green manure in the perennial garden last season...the nodes produce sugars the rhizoba bacteria feed on...the bacteria, in turn produces nitrogen which the plant uses...symbiosis...the bacteria produces far more nitrogen than the plants can use so it "fixes" that element in the soil...it will leech out if left in the soil so i would plant winter wheat to act as a reservoir for the nitrogen until it was needed the next spring...the mix i planted in this bed has hairy vetch and winter rye which will do the same job...they will resume growth in the spring until i turn them under to provide nutrients for whatever is planted there next season...an effort to create a vastly simplified version of the processes that go on naturally ( and pretty much unseen ) all around us and avoid the use of chemical fertilizers...no need when, with a bit of patience, we can use a natural process...the rest of the bed will be planted in green manures a soon as someone digs the remaining produce...we will be looking for nodes on the roots of the annual plants in this mix as they die back this autumn...more photos then...the bottom photo is of a cowpea bloom ( a very short-lived flower you will only find in the morning...they fall off by the after noon )to show that green manures have aesthetic value as well.