Spinach as green manure???

[Rick]

Does anyone have any experience or advice on using spinach as green manure? I always have plenty of spinach seed that I could sprinkle around after the fall harvest.

Thanks!

Rick

[Rick]

Does anyone have any experience or advice on using spinach as green manure? I always have plenty of spinach seed that I could sprinkle around after the fall harvest.

Thanks!

Rick

[Liza]

Spinach likes a great deal of nitrogen, like silverbeet, and other green leaf crops. I have never heard of it being used as a green manure crop.

As green manure crops are generally used to add nitrogen to the soil, though they may also be for other purposes, I wouldn't personally use spinach as a manure crop.

What is the soil like you intend to plant the spinach in ? If you found the last crop you had on that bed was overly leafy with small fruit, maybe a spinach crop is what it needs. If you were adding compost to the bed, I would not recommend to use spinach as a green manure crop.

[someone]

Spinach will not add a lot of nitrogen to your soil. You might be better off growing Phacelia or trefoil or some other clover-type thing to add nitrogen as a green manure if you want a plot of land to lie fallow for a season. Phacelia looks nice, too.

s.

[nswong]

Hi,

green

sprinkle

As long as it will not take much effort to grow the spinach, and it do grow well and fast for you, you can use it as a catch crop to scavenging nutrient, as well as cover crop to reduce erosion.

But since spinach will decompose very fast once till in soil, and lost with rain water, as for green manure, you should mixed spinach with other high carbon plant(eg. ryegrass) for holding the nitrogen release from spinach.

Regards, Wong

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