Hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are talking about kind of like a

cover crop but I just wanted to cover a different terminology that people will

use when they're talking about cover cropping and what that means.

And so the terminology that I'm going to cover is green manure.

And it's sort of a misleading term because anytime we think of manure, we think of an animal byproduct, animal waste that is usually composted, well-rotted and broken down, and then we would put that in the soil to add some extra fertility and

organic matter. However, green manure is not that. It is plant waste that we use

and use to build and till into the soil or use to leave on top of the

soil as a soil amendment or as a mulch. So green manure is a way of adding fertility to the soil that does not involve buying in fertilizers

and synthetics from elsewhere.

And so the benefits of this are twofold. So the first one is that, number one,

you're not using anything that's synthetic.

You're literally using natural systems

in order to improve your soil, which is fantastic.

The second benefit is that even if you were buying in naturally produced or organic

biomass to add to your soil, that's still getting trucked in from somewhere, so you're effectively taking it from somewhere

else using those fossil fuels and then shipping it into your yard.

And if you can get away with growing it in your own yard and using your own property and your own resources to add

biomass to your soil, then sure, why wouldn't you?

And that's where green manure's come into play.

So the main... green manure is come into play.

So the main type of green manure

that people will use is some sort of leguminous green manure.

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