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.

Cover Crops and Green Manures

Last week I wrote a post about the dutch white clover I planted in my community garden plot this fall (see Cover Clover).  Renee Michelle pointed out in the comments that I didn't really explain cover crops or how they work - and they're really brilliant! - so now I'm going to.

Cover crops are grown on land that isn't being used for production with the intention of cutting and/or tilling them (in my case, turning the soil with a shovel) before they produce seeds.  What's awesome about cover crops:

• Reduce erosion of (presumably) valuable topsoil
• Reduce loss of soil nutrients - particularly nitrogen - due to rainwater run-off and percolation
• Discourage invasion by weeds
• When they're cut/tilled organic matter is added to the soil, which:
• improves water and nutrient retention
• makes soil like mine much easier to dig, plant, weed, you-name-it
• Many can also be considered "green manures" because they are legumes, so they steal nitrogen from the air, which gets incorporated into the soil as they biodegrade
• Plant root systems improve groundwater and oxygen penetration into the soil
• Cut plant material can serve as a mulch for successive "cash" crops

I made those last two benefits red because they can't be realized if you till or turn the cover crop into the soil like I do.  But hey, pretty good, right?  And the only drawbacks are that:

• Can become weeds themselves (if not cut in time)
• Seeds cost money

I am sort of excited about cover crops right now because I've never had a garden as big as my community garden plot.  I am finding it onerous having to hoe so many square feet of path, particularly in mid summer, when the bare clay soil dries as hard as a rock and the wild grasses run amok.  (My plan has more path in it than strictly necessary because I feel having lots of paths helps reduce the temptation for little feet to impulsively run through a bed of newly planted seedlings.  A good trade-off if you ask me.)  The gleam in my gardening eye these days is the beginnings of a new, better, bolder plan for next year's weed-free garden!

Okay, go ahead and laugh.

Cover Clover

Planted garlic beds

I decided to order some cover crop seed to try to reduce the weed-pulling workload in my community garden plot.  Then I accidentally set the large paper seed package down in a puddle of water.  Then I scattered as many of the seeds as I could salvage around my freshly weeded tomato beds.  It's coming in kind of thick, don't you think?