nodes

curiosity got the better of me today so while i was at the garden i pulled up ( gently ) a dixie clover plant just to have a look at the roots...when i rinsed the soil off them i was rewarded with finding exactly what i was looking for...nodes...this is a much smaller root system than the cow peas i had been using as green manures in the perennial garden but the effect is still the same...nitrogen in the soil...there were sugar producing nodes all along the root system that fed the rhizobia bacteria that produced the nitrogen in amounts greater than the plants could use themselves..the perennial rye and hairy vetch that will overwinter in the bed ( perhaps dormant...perhaps not...depends on the climate...there will be blogs ) are there to act as a reservoir for all that nitrogen...in the spring when whoever claims the bed is ready to plant all they have to do is turn the green manures under and the nutrients in the organic matter, including the stored nitrogen, will be slowly released as the plants decompose allowing the plants a rich soil to grow in...this recharges the nutrients we mined out of that bed when we grew potatoes...those potatoes and the plants that produced them disappeared from the garden into a compost pile and someone's lunch, never to return to the bed they came from...this is payback..an effort to close nutrient cycles without recourse to chemical fertilizers...a hijacked natural process...the sort of thing gardeners are always doing, consciously or not...i carp a lot about seed saving, but if we manage to obtain some seed for any of these plants before the frosts do the annuals in it would be even a more sustainable cycle closure since we can use the saved seed instead of procuring some for elsewhere mining their nutrients...legumes are even more well known for their nitrogen fixing relationship with rhizobia...we are going to hold off examining the yellow pea roots until we find out if we can obtain mature seed from them...some pods are maturing and we don't want to be precipitous in yanking them up for a photo op... we have found seed for illinois bundleflower which is another legume, and will be adding it to next year's mix with the eventual aim of planting beds in green manures as soon as they are harvested...if we do this right eventually compost will become an occasional addition since we will be growing our own right in the beds...incidentally, i replanted the clover...its days are numbered since it is an annual but i felt obligated to try.