Experiment: Alfalfa as a Fence

Using Alfalfa as a border marker has a few interesting properties:

• It roots very deeply, and can thus recover nutrients from deeply burried soil layers;
• Being a Legume, it fixates nitrogen from the air, making it an excellent green manure to spread over the garden itself;
• It is a perennial, so it need not be replanten continually if carefully harvested;
• Unlike the green manure clover, it is not subject to the problematic Clubroot disease;
• Having a green manure grow in an otherwise unused place is a good way of avoiding any conflict with the actual crops grown;
• The height of Alfalfa makes it a good wind breaker;

It is probably best not to harvest Alfalfa all the way to the ground, because it would stop being a wind breaker. It is probably smarter to cut it at a height of half a meter or so. The right time is probably what is generally believed to be good, when about 10% of the flower show. During frost in winter, Alfalfa freezes to death from the ground up, without need for human intervention. It should come back the next year.

Questions to answer:

• What is the best way to harvest Alfalfa?
• How to ensure that it revitalises itself?
• Are moles kept out by the long roots? That would be bad.
• Are rats and mice kept out by the long roots? That would be good.
• Are chemicals pulled up from low layers of soil? That would be bad.
• Is erosion avoided by the deeply rooting Alfalfa borders?

I will update this page when I know more. I'll have to try it first. If you have experiences with this idea, please let me know!