The Benefit Of Growing Fenugreek For Healthier Garden Soil

If you have a taste for certain Indian and Middle Eastern cuisines, you're probably already familiar with fenugreek, whose maple syrup-scented seeds and astringent leaves are used in dishes ranging from curries to pastries. In addition to its culinary uses, fenugreek is among the world's oldest medicinal herbs and has been used for around 6,000 years to treat conditions such as kidney stones and menopause symptoms, as well as a supplement for breastfeeding mothers. To this day, its high fiber, vitamin, and fatty acid content make it a popular dietary supplement. It has also been historically grown as nutritious feed for livestock — in fact, its Latin name, Trigonella foenum-graecum, means "Greek hay."

But did you know that fenugreek can have a number of benefits for your garden, as well? As a legume –- a member of the Fabaceae family — fenugreek can be a useful cover crop, sometimes called "green manure." Cover crops such as legumes function as nitrogen fixatives: They form symbiotic relationships with the Rhizobium bacteria colonizing their roots, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a form useful to plants. In other words, by planting fenugreek in rotation with tomato plants or other crops, you can naturally replenish the soil nutrients in your garden.

Fenugreek is an annual herb that grows well in USDA Hardiness Zones 5 through 9, preferring areas that maintain annual temperatures from 45 to 80 degrees. This bushy, 1- to 2-foot-tall herb plant tends to like loamy soil with good drainage and can tolerate occasional dryness, though it will suffer in overly wet soils, so make sure not to overwater or you might risk root rot. Fenugreek prefers full sun and can be directly sown from seed from spring to late summer, depending on temperatures — try to keep 2 inches between plants and 8 inches between rows.

A vigorous and rapid grower, fenugreek will generally germinate within a week. This, along with slight allopathic (or herbicidal) properties, enable it to out-compete many weeds. The leafy greens can be harvested for use after about 30 to 45 days, but before the plant begins flowering. Once the seed pods have developed and turned yellow, they will also be ready for harvesting and sun drying.

Once you've harvested all of the leaves and seeds you want at the appropriate times, you can "chop and drop" fenugreek to give your soil a nutritional boost. Essentially, this means chopping or mowing the remaining plants and tilling them back into the soil as compost. As a nitrogen fixer — again, one of the characteristics of legumes — when fenugreek is chopped and dropped, it returns the nitrogen it has accumulated to the soil, where other plants can make use of it.