“Sustainable, ethical farming builds soil nitrate and soil organic matter levels by first plowing under a lush legume green manure. However, keep in mind that most kinds of garden vegetables require more nitrate than legume green manuring can usually create. Yet garden writers not equipped with the experience to evaluate farming techniques instruct gardeners to create sufficient soil nitrates by placing bush beans around a nitrate-demanding plant. To pursue that illusory nitrogen, gardeners give up hoeing and switch to painstakingly slow hand-weeding in order to grow bush beans amongst their cabbages, all this to no useful result — just because an early garden writer misunderstood an organic farming book.” - Steve Solomon, The Intelligent Gardener