My Top Green Manure Rotation Scheme, the Eternal Yield garden plan

I’m using my top green manure rotation scheme in another test plot to see if a typical garden can be nourished by green manure crops alone. So far I’m excited by the results. This may be the garden of the future. Here’s what I do:

In half of the test plot (12 by 24 feet), I grow peas and follow them with snap beans and a final crop of annual ryegrass at the end of the season. We get 75 pounds of shelled peas and more than 125 pounds of beans from these crops before tilling them in.

In the other half of the plot I grow a mixture of vegetables. Greens, beets, carrots, onions, peppers, cabbage, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn. Four of the rows are thick wide rows. As in my other test plots, I don’t use any fertilizer, manures, or anything else. I harvest these vegetables the way I harvest my other gardens, and when I’m done I till the residues into the soil.

The next season I switch crops, planting the vegetables where the peas and beans grew the previous year. They will use the nitrogen fixed by the plant roots and deposited in the soil, as well as the foods produced by soil life breaking down the plant material worked into the soil.

The peas, beans, and annual ryegrass are raised on the other side to replenish what was taken out of the soil by the vegetables.

So far, this “flip-flop” rotation is working well. The vegetables have been excellent. I’ve gotten some of the choicest beets and carrots ever from this garden, and a lot of them. I’m convinced that this plan will continue to work, giving me vegetables and providing lots of organic matter and soil nutrients year after year.

I can’t guarantee that this Eternal Yield plan is the ideal combination for all climates and soils. Someday I’d like to test it in southern states because organic matter decomposes quickly in hot weather there. Different rotations might be required to keep the soil full of decomposing organic matter. Perhaps a little home compost would be needed in the vegetable area.

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