What do you use for a Crop Cover/ Green Manure

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Permalink Reply by Irene on September 9, 2008 at 7:27pm

Hi, Chris --

I'm in the Pacific Northwest so our climate is different, but I think many of the usual winter cover crops will do well everywhere. I would recommend to you that you be careful *where* you plant alfalfa as it roots very deeply, which is both the good and bad news.

Its roots can go down 20 feet and bring up minerals from the subsoil. The extensive lateral roots eventually loosen and enrich the soil in a surprisingly large area surrounding it. The bad news is that it's difficult to eradicate it once it has settled in, so I have it growing only at some of the corners of my mounded beds. Throughout the growing season I clip it and use it for mulch on the beds.

Winter rye does, indeed, make enormous networks of roots, so be sure to dig it under before it gets too tall and tough in the spring.

My favorite cover crop is peas: Austrian field peas, bush peas, whatever pea seeds I have available. The plants grow right through our winters, the tops are delicious in salads, and if they are bush peas there are always lots of small new peas early in the spring.

I don't try to sort them out, just let them grow through the winter all in a tangle, then harvest them for the compost bed when it's time to set out the plants I've started in the greenhouse. Chopped pea vines make great nitrogen-rich mulch to put around new plants, also.

Hope that helps.

~ irene

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Permalink Reply by Tamra on September 9, 2008 at 8:16pm

I have three favorites, depending on when in the growing season I sow. I am in Tennessee zone 6, so we get freezes in the winter, but not so cold that the proper cover crop will not grow.

In mid summer when I have an empty spot I sow buckwheat, which grows quickly. This summer I also tried black beans, like the peas mentioned earlier the beans fix nitrogen, and given enough time will give me food as well.

In the fall I like crimson clover because it fixes nitrogen and is hardy to 25F.

In early Spring I plant oats, they grow quickly in cool temps and create a lot of biomass

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Permalink Reply by Teresa Fortner on September 11, 2008 at 6:53pm

I live in Sptbg also and buckwheat is good nitrogen fixer/cover crop. Just till in under in mid-spring and your veggies will thank you. If you can find someone who micro-brews beer they will appreciate the the fruits which are kind of used like barley and hops. You can find buckwheat seed and JohnnySeeds.com. They also have a lot of other cover crop seed if you don't care for buckwheat.

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Permalink Reply by Valerianella on September 12, 2008 at 4:13pm

we grow winter vetch and broad beans during winter as cover crop. We allow some of the broad beans to set fruit, it is usually the first vegetable we harvest from the garden. Both are nitrogen fixers.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy on September 19, 2008 at 6:06am

Three cheers for your front garden!
I have often used Rye, sown in Fall after cleaning up summer crops at first frost, sometimes by itself, other times mixed with Hairy Vetch or Crimson Clover. In the past I've used a tiller to incorporate the cut material in the spring, but I'm moving towards no-till, so I've been interested to learn that if Rye is cut just after the pollen appears, it will not grown back, and one can just plant into the stubble, leaving the cut stems as mulch. I'm going to try that this winter.
I've also used Buckwheat a lot as a cover crop to crowd out weeds in between other crops in mid-summer.
Several years ago I tried Oats as a winter cover, expecting it to winter-kill and leave a nice mulch, but in zone 7 on the edge of Philadelphia it did not die. I'd still like to find something else which could be planted in late summer, would grow to form a nice thick cover to out-compete weeds, then die over the winter leaving a thick enough mulch to keep winter weeds from getting started. This year I've been experimenting with Sorghum-Sudangrass, and with Japanese and Pearl Millets.
I've never tried Alfalfa - from what I've read it seems that it's generally planted to grow for at least two years, so the roots can go deep and really work into the subsoil. For the past couple of years I've been using Field Peas as a Spring cover. They don't compete very well with the weeds, but they're better than bare soil or plain mulch, add a nice nitrogen boost for the summer crops, and are easy to pull out when it's time to plant, if you don't want to till them in.
There is a lot of good information on smaller-scale cover cropping at the Virginia Association for Biological Farming website. Also at Ecology Action, though I haven't had a chance to look through much of their material yet; they're working more with gardeners than farmers.
SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) produces a book called Managing Cover Crops Profitably - it's written for farmers but useful for gardeners, and has a lot of really good information about cover crops for various purposes and different parts of the US. For $19 you can get a printed copy - but you can download a pdf for free

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Permalink Reply by Donna Smith on September 19, 2008 at 7:16am

I also live in the Pacific Northwest and use my standard three, Crimson clover, Fava Bean and hairy vetch combination, They all do a great job of either fixing nitrogen, protecting the soil surface during our rainy months and what they do for the soil after chopped and turned is amazing. I too leave a few to fruit on the fava and use these seed for next years cover. I love the use of regular peas as stated above. I think I will give it a try!

During the summer months I use buckwheat as it is extremely fast and fixes for fall plantings. I tend to stay away from the grasses as they do take hold and for me are harder to work when chopping in for green manure in the spring.

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Permalink Reply by Chris Bocchino on September 19, 2008 at 7:52am

So here is what I did this year. I did a combonation of Abruzzi Rye and Crimson Clover in the new garden plot. Abruzzi rye in an area that used to have nothing but English Ivy (I hate the stuff) in it for the past 20 years that I tore up and am going to be landscaping into a rose garden/ grape vinyard area. The power company removed a bunch of trees from the right side of my property so i planted some more rye along there to act as a wind break and prep the soil a bit for new landscaping in the early spring. Also i put the Rye around my fire pit area, I plan on surrounding the entire area with bamboo eventually to make it a bamboo grove with my fire pit, hammock and outdoor eating/ entertaining area inside of it but until i find someone in my area that is willing to donate some bamboo it is going to have to wait. But I put the rye around it to act as a wind break for the winter as well. Finally I am going to be covering the hills in my front lawn that go down to the road with Crimson Clover. Its a pain to mow and the grass is very thin. Im hoping to landscape it this next spring, either going to terrace it entire thing or am going to plant Love Grass so i can just leave it but until them i think the Crimson Clover is going to be a beautiful color contribution in the spring.
Oh and as for my current garden, I am planning on covering it with buchwheat in the spring, chopping it down, then no tilling an entire 1200 sqft pumpkin patch for the neighborhood kids halloween next year. Ill be taking some photos of my project as time goes on so keep an eye out. Chris

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Permalink Reply by George Paynter on September 30, 2008 at 7:42pm

Hi Chris
Do a search fro "Tillage Radish . I plan to use it for the first time this fall.
2 inch roots go down 2 feet to break up subsoil.....feeder roots much more.
Supposedly dies with a hard freeze or cut the top of the the root and leave the rest in the ground in the spring.

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