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Old February 27, 2012   #2
fortyonenorth
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: NW Indiana
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Here's an interesting article on organic nitrogen sources and their availability: http://horttech.ashspublications.org...4/431.full.pdf

About four pages in there's a graph that illustrates the nitrogen availability from a turned-in cover crop. Availability follows a bell curve and looks like it peaks at about 3 weeks. Most sources advise planting tomatoes 2-3 weeks after you've turned-under the crop. By doing this, the N needs of the tomato and the N availability of the CC will be asynchronous. In other words, you'll be missing most of the nutritional benefit of the cover crop.
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