Lupine as green manure: how to sow, the effect of lupins on the soil, care

Category: Siderates Reading time: 9 min · Views: 3,054

Many people are familiar with these flowers with a star-shaped rosette of leaves, in the center of which a drop of morning dew shines so beautifully, and a columnar panicle of blue or bright purple inflorescences. Lupine as a green manure, and all its types - annual, perennial, white or narrow-leaved - are an excellent means of fertilizing the land.

There are many varieties of green manure. But lupine stands apart from them, primarily because it is beautiful. The area sown with it looks like a specially cultivated flower garden. Whereas in fact, the role of lupine when sowing it is simply to enrich the soil with those fertilizers and microelements that were “eaten” from it by previous plantings. That is, do the work that all types of green manure do - enrich the soil with nutrients.

Types of lupins

Blue lupine as green manure

It has a straight stem and the same root with a few lateral shoots. It is called blue from the wild, basic breed, from which varieties with purple, lilac, blue and pink flowers were subsequently bred.

Breeders have developed many varieties of this plant: “Crystal”, “Nemchinovsky Blue”, “Smena”, etc., which can be used both for enriching and loosening the soil, and as fodder. But there is a special variety that is used to sow areas intended for future crops, which plays the role of green manure. And it is called simply, to immediately indicate its purpose: “Siderat-38”.

The method of propagation of lupine is interesting: ripe pods burst, instantly twisting their halves, and shoot seeds 2-4 meters in different directions. This achieves even coverage of the areas for propagation, thus giving a second harvest per season. But gardeners should not use this method because of the uncontrollability of scattering seeds in the wrong place. It is easier to mow the tops before they are fully ripe.

Blue angustifolia, with its small above-ground part (the plant rarely exceeds one and a half meters), has phenomenal roots, reaching 2 meters. And if you take into account their ability to move apart dense soils, it becomes clear why blue lupine is preferred as a green manure. You just need to wait a year, sowing it in the spring and plowing the area with grass in the fall. Over the winter, the roots in the ground will die and partially decompose, enriching the soil with substances useful for future crops.

Yellow lupine

An even shorter plant than the blue one, reaching a length of barely 1 meter. The only one of the annual lupins whose method of reproduction is cross-pollination, unlike white and blue ones - they can self-pollinate.

It has “candle” inflorescences of soft yellow, sometimes with an orange tint. The crop is heat-loving, so in the middle zone it can be sown only when stable spring warmth sets in, excluding night frosts.

White varieties are sown: “Fakel”, “Peresvet” and “Grodnensky-3”, on sandstones and sandy loams, in which the quality of yellow lupine is well demonstrated, such as binding loose soils with tiny and very branched small feeding roots.

White

White lupine is rarely used as green manure. It is sown mainly as a fodder crop for livestock.

The main benefit why white lupine is preferred as a fodder crop is the absence of alkaloids in the stems, leaves and seeds that are harmful to animals. In blue and yellow lupine they are present initially - that is why the wireworm hastily leaves the plantation with them, which dies from these alkaloids.

It requires care, unlike its yellow and blue lupins, but it will more than pay off in the productivity of the plant. White lupine reaches a height of 2 meters, and the “candles” of inflorescences themselves are 30 centimeters long. All parts of the plant are edible for livestock, and the root, left in the ground until next year, having decomposed, will enrich the soil with minerals and organic matter no worse than other green manures. Only the above-ground part, naturally, will not be used for this purpose.

Diseases and pests

The main diseases of lupine include powdery mildew, fusarium, gray rot, and brown spot. To prevent these diseases, pre-sowing treatment of seeds with a fungicide (HOM Oxyx) should be carried out, as well as soil treatment.

Spraying the soil and the plants themselves with insecticides, such as chlorophos, will help against lupine pests: lupine weevil, sprout fly, alfalfa aphid and others.

You can reduce the likelihood of lupine being damaged by pests if you choose a pest-resistant variety for planting.

So, lupine is a very powerful green manure. It grows very quickly, heals the soil, fertilizes it, alkalizes it, improves its structure, repels some types of pests, and fights pathogenic microflora. Only annual varieties of lupine are used as green manure. Perennial lupine is grown only as an ornamental plant and honey plant. When choosing a lupine variety as a green manure, you need to take into account climatic conditions and soil composition.

Benefits of lupine

The ability of lupins to penetrate deeply (up to 1.5-2 meters) with their roots deep into the earth, even beyond the boundaries of the cultivated soil layer, makes it a kind of “pump” that lifts monohydrogen phosphates to the top. And since the plant itself does not consume them, but only accumulates them in its roots and other parts, then next year these minerals will become available to subsequent crops.
In addition to the delivery and accumulation of mineral and organic substances after their life cycle, lupine roots, by loosening the soil, enrich it with oxygen, destroying anaerobic microflora.
Alkaloids, of which there are many in blue and yellow lupine, and especially such as lupinin, will not only repel pests and destroy pathogenic forms of fungi and bacteria, but also, when disintegrating, will significantly reduce the acidity of the soil, making it either neutral or slightly alkaline.
Quickly gains green mass (especially white, with proper cultivation). After just a month and a half, you can carry out the first mowing of the white variety for animal feed. If the entire mass of the plant is used as green manure, this will replace the application of mineral fertilizers and organic matter, and the soil structure will be closer to ideal for any crops.
Does not require serious care - except for watering during dry periods. In terms of viability it is close to the most tenacious weeds.

Before which garden crops should I plant?

Lupine as a fertilizer is a good precursor for garden crops that are sensitive to nitrogen content in the soil:

potato;

zucchini;

cucumbers;

tomatoes;

raspberries;

pumpkin.

Large amounts of nitrogen are not recommended for various types of salads, legumes - beans, peas. It is not recommended to plant before or after legumes - this increases the risk of infection with common diseases characteristic of this family.

It is harmful to plant lupine in front of onions, since the bulbs will form and store poorly.

How to sow

In a “wild” area where nothing grew before, the first thing you need to do is remove the weeds. A disc cultivator is quite suitable for this; it will loosen the top layer of soil, destroying the root system of the weeds dormant in it. After this, all available plant residues are removed, and usually in the second half of May, when the risk of night freezing of the soil disappears, sowing is done.

The seeds need to be buried approximately 3-4 cm in narrow furrows, in moist soil: if the weather has been dry for a long time, it is pre-irrigated. Watering is also done one day after sowing. The total amount of water poured onto the area with lupine sowing should be one and a half times greater than the total mass of seeds. The average distance between seeds introduced into the ground should be maintained in the range from 5 to 10 cm.

Lupine seeds are quite large, so those who have time sometimes help this crop to germinate by first slightly cutting each seed. This will not harm the quality of the seedlings, and germination itself will occur faster.

For better germination, seeds can be soaked for a day, the day immediately preceding sowing.

How to prepare soil and seeds

Before planting, the soil is loosened to a depth of 25 cm, that is, to the tip of a shovel, adding mineral or organic fertilizers:

wood ash;

dolomite flour;

phosphorus-potassium mineral mixtures;

on acidic soils - lime in small quantities (not all lupins like calcium).

For better drainage, you can mix loamy soil with sand or peat, if possible.

The seeds are pre-soaked in a foundationazole solution to reduce the risk of fungal disease.

Lupine is one of the plants that suffers from fusarium, so pre-treatment is required.

The effect of lupins on the soil

On thin roots extending from the main, skeletal root, during the growth of lupine, small nodules are formed - accumulators of nitrogenous substances. As a result of this accumulation, aspartic acid is synthesized, as well as other similar types of nitrogen-containing amino acids.

Nitrogen is almost the most important component that allows all plants to gain green mass. But being unbound, it quickly evaporates from the soil, depleting it. Therefore, the use of green manure plants such as lupine is often the only and inexpensive way out of the situation when the soils are poor in fertilizers and microelements.

The herbaceous part of lupine, plowed into the ground in the fall, is close to manure in terms of the content of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium compounds - but with much better and easier digestibility than the latter.

Flaws

There is also a fly in the ointment in the barrel of advantages. Lupine cannot be called an ideal green manure, because it:

It is picky about the type of soil and does not demonstrate the best germination on clay, rocky and alkaline varieties. The plant demonstrates maximum performance in well-loosened soil;
it is sown late, and it takes about 8 weeks for lupine to reach its maximum height, which is longer than a number of analogues;
does not tolerate shadows;
requires significant seed consumption. At least 2 kg is required per hundred square meters.

Many summer residents are in no hurry to plant lupine on their plots, fearing its uncontrolled dispersion. the annual option to enrich the soil and mow it in a timely manner.

Comparison with other green manures

Type of green manure	Productivity by green mass (ts/ha)	How many days will it take to reach maximum productivity?	Amount of nitrogen in biomass	The amount of phosphorus oxides in biomass	Potassium oxides in biomass
Lupine	526	80	231	63	209
Peas	219	80	117	71	215
Vika	257	90	160	73	201
Phacelia	317	60	78	52	196
Beans	157	80	58	24	248
Oilseed radish	462	50	86	66	59

So lupine has a lot of advantages over other green manures. In addition to the above, this is also the possibility of planting on areas that have never been cultivated before, and a better ability to fix nitrogen in compounds that are convenient for absorption. With a successful combination of circumstances, lupine can bind up to 160 kg of nitrogen from the atmosphere, which will give the same effect to 500 kilograms of ammonium nitrate.

For its development, lupine itself does not require any fertilizers; you can plow in its green mass after mowing just a month and a half after sowing, and for germination you do not need to bother with such a thing as seedlings. Not to mention its unpretentiousness to summer weather conditions and its high decorative value.

Due to its extensive and long root system, lupine literally tears apart dense lumps that have been compacted in the depths of the earth for decades or even centuries, crushing them with slow pressure. Nematodes, wireworms and such unpleasant neighbors of root systems as chafers are in a hurry to get out of the area in which lupins were sown - the alkaloids released into the environment successfully expel pests from the soil.

These alkaloids also inhibit weeds, the growth of which stops, and overly acidified soil under the influence of these same alkaloids is neutralized to slightly alkaline.

Does not contain, unlike pure or even fermented manure or bird droppings, pathogenic microflora or larvae of harmful insects.

Advantages

Lupine blue

The green manure properties of lupine delight summer residents. Plant :

forms a large amount of biomass due to its long stem and dense foliage;
effectively enriches the soil with useful phosphorus and nitrogen. Thanks to the long root, they are transported from a hard-to-reach two-meter depth;
intensively loosens the soil with its branched root system, ensuring good penetration of water and air;
does not require labor-intensive care;
tolerates lack of moisture well;
changes the acidity of the soil, turning it neutral;
attracts insects with its delicate aroma, activating the pollination process of cultivated plants;
fights pathogenic bacteria, mold and harmful insects - wireworms, nematodes.

Lupine care

It does not require special care, and easily develops even the most neglected and virgin areas - as long as the soil is normal, not poisoned by industrial emissions.

For better development of the underground part of the plant, which will ensure high quality soil for the next year, after sowing it is necessary to mow the grown lupine stems along with the pods within 1.5 - 2 months.

There is no need to dig the cut stems into the ground. It is enough just to lightly sprinkle the mown tops with soil, and fermentation processes will quickly help to decompose the green mass of the stems into its components, enriching the top layer of soil. You just need to remember to cut off the roots with a flat cutter, which is used instead of a plow to protect soils from erosion.

But it happens that for some reason the one who sowed the lupine could not cut it on time. Then the overgrown stems need to be cut off for compost, taking them out of the field. The fact is that woody lupine trunks do not decompose completely, and in the spring they will serve as an obstacle to tillage.

Interaction with other plants

If lupine is chosen as a green manure, there is no point in using other plants with similar properties. Instead of supplementing, they can mutually extinguish their beneficial properties, and the plants will begin to fight for resources.

Another thing is to sow between rows; under these conditions, their roots will serve as a kind of pump, pumping out nutrients from the deep layers of the soil that the cultivated plants simply cannot reach. All types of lupine can be used for this, although white, with its more branched roots, is preferable. The main thing is to water green manure on time; in hot weather they are very critical to lack of moisture.

All nightshades (eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes), peppers, representatives of cruciferous vegetables (all cabbage, turnips, radishes, turnips), and herbaceous berries (strawberries and wild strawberries) feel good next to lupine. But lupine needs to be removed from its proximity to legumes, which themselves are green manure.

Why cultivation may fail

Primarily due to the high alkalinity of the soil. Producing alkaloids that transform acidic soils into neutral or alkaline, it itself, in turn, requires an acidic environment for successful germination.

Many of those who first sowed lupine as green manure are frightened by the abundance of weeds that sprout along with it. They fear that the weed will overwhelm this crop. But these fears are in vain. Once he takes root properly, he will not leave his neighbors a single chance to survive!

Everything is used: its deep roots, robbing neighbors of nutrients, secreted alkaloids, darkening with its crowns other slower-growing plants.

And if lupine is sown in fields previously occupied by rye or wheat, that’s generally great: these cereals are famous for successfully suppressing any weeds (except cornflower)

Lupine as green manure: when to sow and when to bury?

Lupine as green manure: photo

Lupine, as a green manure, is quite undemanding regarding soil type. So they grow it on different soils. However, heavy soil negatively affects the development of plants, so lupine will need to be grown in more favorable conditions. Before planting this crop, you will need to loosen the soil and also remove all weeds and debris from the area. After this, you can begin planting work. Nitrogen-containing fertilizers should not be applied to the soil, since this type of fertilizing negates all the beneficial properties of these plants.

Many varieties of this crop are frost-resistant, so it can be planted both in early spring (for example, in April) and in autumn. However, the soil must be warm; in such conditions the plant will develop more intensively. Typically, lupine seeds as green manure are planted approximately 3 cm deep, 20 cm are left between rows, and in each row the distance between plants should be about 10 cm. However, depending on the varietal characteristics of a particular lupine, these distances may be different. Therefore, take into account the tallness of the crop, the abundance of flowering, as well as some other factors. It is best not to plant the seeds very close to the surface of the earth, since they have a fairly hard shell, and it is removed only when the crop is germinated from depth. If you plant the seeds of lupine as green manure not very deeply, then the sprouts may not have time to shed this shell. Therefore, the leaves will not develop normally. Some gardeners recommend cutting the seeds so that they germinate faster, but this is a very painstaking process, so it takes a lot of effort and time.

It is not difficult to buy lupine seeds as green manure; they can be purchased at a garden center, agricultural store, and, of course, on the Internet. They are not very expensive, so buying lupine as green manure is not very expensive. But you will definitely understand how to grow such green manure. In any case, this fertilizer will cost you less than ready-made organic mixtures.

Using annual lupine as green manure

After sowing lupine, it is important to remember that this is a green manure crop, that is, it is aimed at improving the soil structure of your site, and not your site itself, therefore you need to care for it accordingly. Usually, a couple of months after the start of growth (no later), the plants are mowed and thoroughly dug up with a turnover of the layer. It is not always possible to do this with a shovel or scythe. To do this, they often resort to using a walk-behind tractor, first cutting the roots with a flat cutter, and then digging up the soil, thoroughly mixing the green mass with it.

Next, the area needs to be left alone for a couple of months so that the green mass rots and is ready for planting other plants on it. If the weather is dry, then once a week you can water the area, using a couple of buckets of water per square meter, or use a conventional herbal infusion or any of the EO preparations.

If you are late in turning lupine into green manure and the pods full of beans become dark, then it is easier to mow all the green mass with a regular mower and put it in a compost heap. Why? It’s just that at a more mature age, lupine stems become so dense that they will decompose in the soil for a long time.

Blue lupine requires only 55-60 days from sowing to be incorporated into the soil; taking this into account, it is quite acceptable to sow it in the fall, followed by embedding into the soil in the autumn. Blue lupine is sown immediately after harvesting the main crop from the garden, which usually occurs in the second ten days of August, and already at the very end of October, preferably before the onset of frost, this green manure crop can be mowed down.

In this case, the green mass, of course, does not need to be buried to great depth; it will be enough to simply mix it with the soil. For those gardeners who do not have the opportunity to mix grass mowed in the fall with the soil, they can simply mow it and leave it on the soil surface until the beginning of spring.

What grows best after green manure?

In a field that was under green manure grasses, potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, strawberries and cabbage grow best; representatives of the legume family grow worst, mainly due to the presence of common pests in both.

Advice. According to my own observations, it is better to keep the row spacing of the garden not under black fallow, as is often the case, but under lupine, that is, also under turf. White or blue lupine is best suited for these purposes, but do not forget about additional watering and remember that after mowing green manure in the garden rows, they do not need to be embedded in the soil, it is better to simply cover the ground with them, creating something like a mulch layer.

Sowing technology

Preparing the bed is the first stage of greening the bed. The area should be well lit by the sun. If the soil is severely depleted, you can additionally add complex fertilizers or good rotted manure before digging. Deep loosening is not required. It is enough to dig up the soil about 10-15 cm. Be sure to carefully select the roots of perennial weeds, which will absorb moisture and nutrients from the soil that the green manure needs.

An important stage when planting lupine is preparing the seed. Seeds must be scarified (break the integrity of the bean shell by any mechanical means), otherwise they may not germinate:

Make a shallow cut on each bean. Use a sharp knife or regular blade for this.
After making the cut, rub the bean on sandpaper several times. You can replace it with a kitchen grater.
Spread a paper napkin or towel away from heat sources and sprinkle generously with warm water.
Dip green manure seeds in a pink solution of potassium permanganate for half an hour.
Spread the lupine seeds on a damp towel and leave for several hours - this will also speed up germination.

It is recommended to sow lupine in furrows. Place them at a distance of 25-30 cm. The depth of the furrows is 2 cm, but for light sandy soils you can increase it to 3 or even 4 cm. After planting the seeds in the ground, walk along the bed with the back of the rake. Additionally, you can compact the soil with a roller - this will help retain moisture in the upper layers.

Conclusions about growing white lupine

Thus, growing lupine is not particularly difficult. The plant helps enrich the soil with nutrient mixtures. It is often used as animal feed. The culture also has a number of useful properties that are actively used in cosmetology. Lupine extract is added to anti-aging masks, shampoos and other hygiene products. The plant is grown by seed method. Finding seed material is not difficult. You just need to contact any nursery that breeds white lupine. The material is also sold on the Internet. The cost per kilogram is low. So it will be quite cheap to plant a plot. And in the future it will be possible to propagate lupine yourself. See the article: Catharanthus - growing from seeds through seedlings in open ground.

Advantages of using lupine as green manure

So far we have only briefly mentioned the benefits of lupine as a green manure, but now we will talk about it in more detail. At its core, this is almost the cheapest and one of the most effective ways to change the structure of the soil for the better. In addition, the lupine plant itself, which has many positive properties and qualities, also brings benefits. For example, the powerful root system, which we have already mentioned, is capable of literally dissolving monohydrogen phosphates and thus lifting them into higher layers of soil accessible to other plants. Lupine, with its powerful and wide root system, perfectly loosens even highly compacted soil and literally feeds it with nitrogen.

It is believed that lupine is simply an ideal green manure crop for soils that are poor in nutrients, that are highly acidic (although not every lupine will grow normally on such soils), and for sandy loam soils, that is, excessively loose and empty. The alkaloids contained in lupine biomass, after plowing it and storing it in the soil, although not very quickly and not so actively, still contribute to the deoxidation of the soil, and with long-term cultivation the substrate often even takes on an alkaline form.

These same alkaloids present in lupine suppress the activity of wireworms in the soil, and when grown in a permanent place, wireworms, along with harmful microflora, can disappear completely.

Due to the fact that after growing lupine, all its green mass is embedded in the soil and, rotting, turns into an excellent green fertilizer, and also enriches the soil with nitrogen, in areas where crops are grown after green manure, the yield noticeably increases. And the most interesting thing is that thanks to the active growth of annual green manures, the result can already be obtained in a little more than a month after their sowing. If we take into account all this that lupine crops require practically no care, it turns out that this is just a fairy tale, not a plant.