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Burra Maluca wrote:It isn't the beans themselves that fix nitrogen, it's the bacteria which, if they are present, form a symbiotic association with the roots.
If the bacteria aren't naturally present in the soil and you didn't inoculate the seed, the beans won't ever fix nitrogen.
Our soil was totally lacking in them when we first moved here and it's taken a few years before we could stop inoculating our seeds. If we planted without inoculating, we'd have to add pee to the soil. When we started to inoculate them, they would grow just fine without pee. These days there seem to be enough of the right bacteria in the soil that we can just plant them and forget about inoculating.
"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."
"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."
Todd Parr wrote:So what about perennial nitrogen fixers? I am just hoping the soil has whatever they need? Or some plants don't need to be inoculated? I have autumn olive, seaberry, peashrub, ...
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Travis Johnson wrote:Rip up a few of the plants and cut into the root nodules and you can see for yourself what is happening with your beans right on your own soil.
If they are white they are not doing anything for nitrogen fixation, and green means they are not fixating much better. The brighter they are in the "reds"...that is going from pink to bright red, the better you can visually see how they are nitrogen fixing. I always figured pink was kicking out around 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre, where as bright red is close to 100 pounds of nitrogen per acre. My experience has been primarily with clovers and alfalfa however and not beans.
As for inoculants; I have never used them, and can get 50-100 pounds nitrogen fixation with clovers and alfalfa anyways, but we use copious amounts of sheep and dairy cow manure so I ASSUME am getting the proper bacteria from that. Inocculants cost $10 to treat 50 pounds worth of clover seed, so while I am not sure of what the recommended pounds of bean seed per acre...clover is 12 pounds to the acre for pure stands...it is not a huge cost. Cheap insurance???
One thing to keep in mind though is, depending on what your area of trees is like, it might be negatively drawing down your nitrogen. I have to contend with this when I clear forest into field. For the first several years all that woody debris breaking down robs my soil of nitrogen, so in order to get my crops to grow, I must pound the nitrogen to it and still get a lackluster crop. HOWEVER, after a few years it switches the other way and with all that woody debris now broken down, gives nitrogen back to the soil. This is why so many hugels fail. People add wood that is not rotted enough into it. All my hugels have been successful, but I have always added really rotted trees to them too.
(I realize you probably know all this Todd, and in no way talking down to you. This is more for others that may not know this information, that is all. Great topic by the way).
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Mike Jay wrote:Thanks Ty! So I guess I need to be cutting my N fixers and not just letting them be. If an annual N fixer dies at the end of the season, does it distribute Nitrogen then? Or does it take it to the grave with it?
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Tj Jefferson wrote:Bryant Redhawk covered this in another thread.
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Todd Parr wrote:I planted a lot of beans, a hundred or so possibly, around an apple tree and some comfrey plants where I am creating a new tree guild. The beans are obviously suffering a nitrogen deficiency, as evidenced by their yellow color and the fact that dumping urine on them for a few days turned them to a nice dark green. How long until beans and other annual nitrogen fixers (or perennial ones for that matter) fix enough nitrogen for their own use?
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List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Todd Parr wrote:
Tj Jefferson wrote:Bryant Redhawk covered this in another thread.
You would think after reading Redhawk's excellent posts on the subject, I would understand it by now, but some of it is still sinking in.
Thanks everyone for the replies.
I'm finding that my sea berry bushes spread like wildfire here. I may move some of the new ones around for chop-and-drop nitrogen plants. Possibly I can prune them back enough to get the nitrogen benefits without killing them off completely, while leaving the originals to produce berries for the chickens, with enough left over for me.
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Bryant RedHawk wrote:
Cut those sea berries back to a stem length of @4-6 inches long and they will comeback no worries. Leave some leaf on them and definitely no worries.
let me know what portions you need help with understanding.
Redhawk
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List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Tj Jefferson wrote:This is an area of much misunderstanding, so thanks Mike for bringing it up.
The legumes give off essentially zero nitrogen unless cut or killed.
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Bryant RedHawk wrote:I hear you Todd, wouldn't that be a near perfect setup?
Nitrogen nodules are plant specific, however, there is a way that might work to get the bacteria to share the work to other plants and that would be micorrhizal fungi.
My new research is showing promise, it appears that bacteria and M. fungi respond to weak electrical signals sent by roots as they put forth exudates, exudates alone account for some increased activity by bacteria and fungi but it is possible the accompanying electrical pulses stimulate them even more, or perhaps that is more the trigger to stimulate and the exudates are the candy the organisms crave. I hope to know more in the coming months.
Redhawk
Bryant RedHawk wrote:. I hope to know more in the coming months.
Redhawk
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Rebecca Norman wrote:
Tj Jefferson wrote:This is an area of much misunderstanding, so thanks Mike for bringing it up.
The legumes give off essentially zero nitrogen unless cut or killed.
I'm not so sure that it's all or nothing like this. Some nitrogen fixers may indeed make nitrogen available for neighboring plants. For example, this study in Cape Cod found that black locust having established itself in the sand dune type ecology had created islands of richer soil that allowed whole communities of non-native plants to establish themselves.
Article: Nitrogen-fixing tree paves the way for other invaders
Or a pdf of the study itself.
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
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Tim B Smith wrote:I am working on a class project following nitrogen fixation and this thread has had more useful information than anything I have found to date. Thank you all for your input in the past. Hopefully this is still accessible to you all.
We are testing hypotheses, so we don't need to be right but we need to make good, testable guesses about how nitrogen and nitrogen fixers might be moving around in plants. The underlying goal is to transfer the maximum amount of nitrogen possible into our tree targets.
I have past student projects that found "pools" of fixed nitrogen (N15 depleted) around sweet clover and lupine. Currently we have a cover crop of hairy vetch and winter rye. We are still working toward the experimental design, but we want to test various ways to transfer rhizobium (and nitrogen) in a garden plot.
It's mid March and the vetch has nodules but is not activated. I have found patches of activated vetch on the school grounds. I have permission to move the soils and the vetch for experiments.
I think we are going to plant small (very small) trees in the plot so we can follow them for a year or two (the point right now is to understand nitrogen fixation, not to grow a crop). I think we have time to put down inoculated vetch. We can also move soil from the area where we have activated vetch. I can also move the wild, activated vetch.
The kicker is that we can trace the movement of N by measuring the level of depletion in N15 in plant tissues. For a couple of hundred dollars we can map the whole process with replicated experiments. We have a small budget so that is possible.
Since they are long lived we can follow the trees for over a year. New growth will contain recent sources of nitrogen.
So...where are we likely to mess this up? What hypotheses would you absolutely test? Where are you curious and what would you warn us away from?
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
Bryant RedHawk wrote:I've been using ammonia as a kick starter for N fixation (35 ml to 2 L H2O dilution) on some green bean plants and the nodules reacted well.
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
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