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If you want to know exactly where you stand wrt your soil, getting it tested is the way to go.

Glad to hear you don't need to add much to it, Chickencoupe. Saves a lot of work and worry, and mebbe a bit of cash, too.

Bon, I'm glad you got the soil test done. Isn't it nice to know there's not a major deficiency of anything? Nitrogen often tests low even when it isn't low, so I always take the nitrogen part of a soil test with a grain of salt. The reason it can falsely test low has to do with the availability of nitrogen at cooler temperatures, for one thing, so soil tests done in cooler weather may show a nitrogen deficiency even when there is not one. This is one reason that some soil testing labs no longer even test for nitrogen.

Legumes fix nitrogen from the air for their own use, but that nitrogen does not become available to other plants while the legumes are actively growing. The nitrogen from the legume plants is released into the soil when you allow the plants to break down and decompose after they die. During decomposition, the nitrogen is released into the soil for plants to use in the following growing season.

One way to return the legume plants' nitrogen to the soil is to cut them off at ground level, leaving the roots in the ground. The roots will decompose in the ground. If you place the cut-off top growth right there on top of the ground, it will decompose there and release its nutrients, including nitrogen, into the soil beneath it. Or, you can pull up the plants and remove them, compost them on a compost pile, and return the compost to the garden.

Interplanting legumes with corn can be more complicated than it sounds. If you are going to walk up and down the rows of corn---perhaps to treat the ears for corn earworms or European corn borers---you'll trample the legume plants to some extent. If snakes are an issue in your yard, they may like to hide in the legume plants beneath the corn plants because it will be a nice, shady space. If you use vigorously-growing legume plants, like many of the pole beans, they can climb all over the corn and shade the leaves too much. When I interplant beans with corn, I use only bush beans or half-runners, and some half-runners really get too large to grow with all but the tallest, sturdiest corn plants. You also can grow bush peas, including southern peas, or other legumes like clover or alfalfa to use for soil improvement, but they improve the soil for the corn only after the fact, not while the corn is growing.

If your soil actually is nitrogen-deficient, you'll know it because the corn plants will be a lighter green than a healthy corn plant should be.

I usually just add manure or compost to the corn-growing area in fall and winter, and it decomposes and is ready to feed the corn by planting time. If I want to grow a Three Sisters garden with corn, beans and squash interplanted, I plant the corn first. After it reaches a certain height, I add beans. If I want to use pole beans instead of bush beans or half-runners, I plant them on the fence on the north side of the corn and let them actually climb the fence. By the time the beans are climbing pretty high on the fence and are trying to stretch out and climb on the corn plants, the corn usually is about ready for harvest anyway. Once the ears are harvested, I let the pole beans ramble and roam their way from corn plant to corn plant. If you interplant pole beans with corn plants and plant them at the same time, the pole beans can outgrow the corn, timewise, and bury the corn plants under their foliage. Corn plants that are too shaded by vigorous bean foliage may not produce well, if at all.

Dawn

Dawn

Thank you for chiming in. I'm sorry. You've mentioned the decomposition ratio of nitrogen on the legumes many times before. Unfortunately, there's so much wrong information "out there". Usually, I'm trying to study some other aspect of gardening which the author excels, but they're wrong about others. That's why I was thinking that. Nitrogen evolves through decomposition of legumes, not before. Got it.

Those roots... all of them would help avoid erosion, wouldn't they? I'm concerned about it. This is on a gentle long slope.

I'm under the impression I should have SOMETHING with roots in that ground at all times. Considering alfalfa since I have rabbits. It's great dirt, but it's still clay. So, I was considering planting some type of store-bought trash okra to help aerate the soil after harvests.

Wow, I'm so perplexed about this erosion issue. It's good soil. I don't want to lose it. The area also contains a "bowl" effect, so I think tilling deeply would, literally, destroy it and create an instant pond. lol

bon

No. No. I can't plant the trash Okra lest it cross with my good okra. Bah! Something else, then..