Which legumes put the most nitrogen into soil?

[Gary350]

Which legumes put the most nitrogen into soil?

I always plant beans with corn to supply corn with a continuous supply of nitrogen all summer this seems to work better than fertilizer every week or so. It would be nice to plant legumes that produces the most nitrogen. I don't care about harvesting any of the legumes. I plant 2 beans for every corn plant.

[jal_ut]

I plant corn where the beans were last year. Get a bag of ammonium nitrate and sprinkle the plot before planting.

[imafan26]

Cowpeas, hairy vetch, crimson clover, and sunhemp are the recommended legume cover crops. How much nitrogen it fixes will depend on the population of rhizobacteria you have in your soil. Inoculating seeds helps with that.

Biomass and tilling in legumes before they go to seed maximizes return of nutrients to the soil. That being said organic nitrogen is very hard to come by. Most plants do not produce a great amount of excess and nitrifying bacteria are balanced by denitrifying bacteria in the soil. I would still add compost and manure to feed the soil web. Corn will take out more nitrogen than most legumes will replace. Soil is a living thing, it takes all kinds of organisms living in the soil, each doing their part to make a healthy and productive soil. It is not just planting legumes, but the biodiversity in the soil and the relationship between plants, animals and the microbial life in the soil, that recycles nutrients.

https://www.grow-it-organically.com/soil-food-web.html
https://www.britannica.com/science/nitrogen-cycle
https://www.slideshare.net/saramssantos ... e-14932178

[rainbowgardener]

Incidentally, imafan, are you OK?

Pictures coming out of Hawaii are looking pretty apocalyptic:

https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/vi ... 323036649/

[imafan26]

Thanks for the concern. Kauai and Maui were hit the worst with the flooding rain. Kauai had a record 48 inches in 24 Hours. The main roads are still blocked by mudslides and it has been hard for people to even get supplies sent in.

On Oahu the hardest hit was Waimanalo. It is zoned heavily for agriculture and some of the farms literally were under water and suffered near total crop loss. The University has a research station there and their apiaries were flooded as well.

I am in Central Oahu, I did get the power knocked out a few time with the rain and lightning, and some things fell and blew around in the yard, but I was very lucky. The roof kept all of its shingles. My orchid cover is hanging on by a thread. I will have to repair it. The weeds were happy, I have to round up again.

On the Big Island, the volcano has opened up more rifts in Pahoa and has consumed roads and homes in Leilani Estates. It is sad because many of these people have lived there a long time and have no where else to go. They are reluctant to leave the homes empty because they fear looters would come in. You have to understand that the volcano has been erupting since 1983, Lava can surface and run a few days, weeks or months and stop. Hawaii has a shield volcano so it is not explosive like Pompeii, Krakatoa, or Etna. It tends to erupt along rift zones and slowly ooze out. Most of the homes in Pahoa were built on lava fields from the 1960's, so they knew that it was a risk that the lava would flow there again. They just did not think after 50 years it would happen so soon.

[xtron]

rainbowgardener is right. it takes a lot of different things to make dirt into soil.
don't know how the seasonal planting in Hawaii works, but here, I follow up my second crops, and any long season crops with oats.
as the ground goes bare for the winter, I sow a heavy crop of oats. oats, around here any way, is called first aid for the soil. it puts lots of micro nutrients down that are uses by almost every crop you will plant next year. added benefit...cover crop to help keep late season weeds at bay. added benefit...the first hard frost kills it, and the root system is light enough, you can direct sow into it next spring, if you are doing no/minimum tillage(I have done this)..there in the tropics, you could turn it under for a green manure crop. if you have livestock, let it grow for feed. it's really tough to thrash for rolled oats, so unless you are really really really into going pure paleo, don't go there.

[Gary350]

It is common practice for farmers to alternate crops, plant corn 1 year then plant beans the 2nd year to add nitrogen to soil so they can plant corn again the 3rd year an so on year after year.

Another common crop rotation is plant red clover very early spring bale hay in June and still have time to plant corn or beans. Clover & beans both added nitrogen to soil for corn.

I try to use beans to add nitrogen to my garden soil but I plant beans in a patch & corn in rows to save space. Also corn needs more sun than beans it is not easy in my garden to swap places with corn & beans every year. 7 rows 30 ft of beans takes up 90% more space than a 3 ft x 20 ft patch of beans. Idea situations would be, do as farmers do but my garden has too many shade trees.

[rainbowgardener]

It is hard for me to imagine that the difference between one legume and another in terms of how much N they add to the soil would be very significant. Clearly less than the difference for which one grows better in those particular conditions, etc.