being that nitrogen from clover is in an organic form and I assume more stable (could be very wrong), wouldn't it be more apt to hang around when compared to the type from a bag?
How long do those clover N nodules remain a nodule after the plant has died. I guess that's my question.
Like everything, the answer is, "It depends"!
Biology, primarily bacteria, feeds on the various forms of N, and then THEY feed it to the plants. It's also specific bacteria, living in a symbiotic relationship with specific plants (why you innoculate your legume with a
specific bacteria, so that it WILL nodulate) that create the nodules on the plant that they are associated with. Bacteria "consume" those nodules, and bacteria "feed" it to the N requiring plants.
Yes, legume nodulated N is more "stable" in that it is in an organic form, and less prone to "leaching"... it requires bacteria to convert it into inorganic N, which is then prone to solubilizing in water, and so becomes vulnerable to "leaching" as well AT THAT POINT. But this is a slower process, BECAUSE it is done biologically. You could call it "stabilized nitrogen" if you wanted to. However... do a tillage pass where these nodules are located, and you end up aerating the soil to unnatural levels... which generates a big bloom of
aerobic bacteria (why tilled soils are bacterially, rather than fungally dominant).
Those bacteria need to eat something to survive... they need carbon, and nitrogen. And they breathe out CO2, just as a result of being alive, and active. Till the soil, and your Solvita CO2 burst test will suddenly indicate an unnaturally high level of biological activity shortly thereafter (So we say, OH... isn't that what we want... so a "good thing"? But you have to wait for "the rest of the story..."). Throw nitrogen out on the soil, and catch a rain, and you'll see a somewhat similar burst, even without the tillage... and you'll see the evidence of that "handoff" of nutrients between the N consuming bacteria and the plants as well... they'll "green right up" and have a sudden growth burst (again... that's what we wanted, right?). We "took a shortcut", and we injected everything with synthetic cocaine (N), to get that quick, and "short-term" gain... and it responded as we anticipated. Like a "sugar high", literally. But when the cocaine injection wears off, the plants and the biology will wane too. So we need to keep on pushing more cocaine at it to keep the bacteria consuming and handing off, and keep this artificially created situation performing at what we perceive as "optimal levels".
The problem here though, is that the population of these aerobic bacteria is thrown into unnatural, unsustainable levels... because we've added "unnatural levels" of N, without commensurately adding additional carbon into the mix. The bacteria need both N and carbon to feed on in order to survive. The unnatural level of aeration created an exponentially unnatural population explosion of aerobic bacteria. They consume carbon voraciously, as long as they have enough N, to stay alive and reproducing at this unnaturally rapid pace. Add N to this aerated soil, the bacteria explosion consumes the available carbon
and releases energy and carbon to the plants... and they grow faster, and greener, and more. But we're burning off the organic matter (carbon) in the soil, faster than we're injecting it back into the soil through the plant photosynthetic processes. So our soil organic matter, and soil organic carbon, is leaving the "piggy bank"... we're operating in a deficit banking condition. An unsustainable condition, long term.
How to turn this around? Stop adding the synthetic N, and add N instead through the use of "N fixing legumes", encouraging other "N fixing bacteria" that can
directly capture N from the air and fix it in the soil (different process and different bacteria than those associated with legumes... tillage destroys the "home" for these beneficials), and livestock/animals that consume carbon product (primarily forages) and produce manure/urine that concentrates... AND SPOON FEEDS N along with other chemical and biologically stimulating carbon elements, WITHOUT the unnatural tillage generated aerobic conditions which result in this excessive burning of the carbon faster than it is able to be returned. A "naturally balanced" system. By ADDING CARBON into the equation (bale grazing, bale unrolling, cover crops, livestock ON the land, etc.), along with the manure/biological stimulation through the animals, we now have a condition where the biology levels will be NATURALLY ramped up in balance, increasing the output of energy from the biology, without "taking" more out than is being put back into the soil piggy bank. It becomes a "slower, steadier, timed-release, sustained" feeding of the plants. As we increase the soil biological elements in balance with the increasing soil carbon levels, production of growing plants gradually increases as well. It becomes a "perpetual motion machine", literally.
You CAN grow more in a short period of time by artificially stimulating the system with "cocaine N and tillage" (that YOU have to pay for and provide... not just today, but always, and in more quantity because of the decreasing natural carbon and biological capacity)... but eventually, you'll run out of carbon. Without carbon, you can't support the soil life. Without the soil life, you can't support life above the surface either.