My New Cover Crop

The side yard

Bean seedlings mixed with cucurbit and tomato volunteers

I've really been working this year on keeping my garden space planted at all times.  It makes more efficient use of the space and helps protect the soil.  I'm definitely doing better than last year, but still not as well as I'd like.  For example, take these little seedlings growing in the side yard next to my house.  I bought some beans at the organic grocery store intending to use them to fill in some empty spots in the community garden plot, but I never got them in the ground.  After taking them out to the garden twice and not getting the chance to plant them, I lost them for several weeks in a bag full of R's toys that I stuffed in a closet.  After forgetting a couple times to take them with me, I finally decided it was time to plant other things anyway, and scattered the beans haphazardly over the surface of the mulch in my new side yard garden.  They came up!  (Along with some compost volunteers.)  In theory they should be killed when the winter weather gets here and will add organic matter and nitrogen to the bed for next year's plants.  In the meantime I suppose they look like a bunch of weeds to other people, but I find them much more cheerful than just the wood chips I used to mulch the bed.