In the last two posts, we talked about growing plants to harvest, either in the fall or over winter.
Manifest more from your garden next year with cover crops.
Honestly, growing cover crops over the winter is one of the easiest ways to improve your garden with almost no work. It protects your soil and keeps weeds down.
💪There are three main reasons cover crops boost your garden’s productivity.
Legume ‘Cover Crops for Nitrogen
Add nitrogen to the soil by growing legume cover crops such as field peas and clovers.
When the plants are spent, be sure to cut them off at ground level and leave those amazing roots that hold nitrogen in the soil so it can be used by other plants.
This works especially well if you notice that leaf crops are not as robust or leaves of other young plants are not greening up.
Once you cut the legume crop, follow it with something that loves lots of nitrogen to grow, like leaf crops.
Cover crops for Compacted Soil
Break up compacted soil. Perhaps you have a bed that has compacted over time. It is not longer loose and loamy. Perhaps you have a bed that has never had the loose soil you want.
In this case, mangle beets, long carrots or daikon radish, can dig deep in the soil and loosen it for you.
Leave the crops in for a while after spring warming so they grow more to loosen your soil. Some carrots overwinter, so they can still be harvested in spring. This way they give you two benefits. Not only does your soil get loosened up, you get sweet spring harvested carrots. 🥕
Add Nutrients to Your Compost
Add biomass to your beds or compost.
Cover crops like buckwheat or winter rye can add bulk to your soil once they dye back in hot weather.
Several years ago, when I was building some new beds and added bee hives to boost pollination. I seeded some beds with winter rye and buckwheat for bio mass, some with field peas for nitrogen.
When I cut down the rye and field peas, I added it to my compost pile. That compost was added to the beds a few months later.
I left the buckwheat to flower in the spring to provide food for the bee population. 🐝
The bees loved it, we harvested a bit of buckwheat seed and late in the summer, the seed that had fallen into the bed sprouted and provided the bees some late season food.
Not sure if bees really love buckwheat flowers, look at the types on honey on your grocery shelves, you will likely find Buckwheat Honey. 🍯
Cover crops are a win all around! – Debby Ward, Member of GardenComm International