Cover Crops??

Just a little sharing, here. My aggie friend recommended not using "grasses" due to the root density. I think that was the reason. Any how, he recommends a mix of seeds, some narrow and deep, some shallow and broad rooted.

sanderson wrote:Just a little sharing, here.  My aggie friend recommended not using "grasses" due to the root density.  I think that was the reason.  Any how, he recommends a mix of seeds, some narrow and deep, some shallow and broad rooted.

Thanks Sanderson, for the suggestion.
Obviously, I like cutting into new pathway that cut down our expanses , but increase the results with our plants.  after watching the video from the leaf mold/compost versus Back to Eden video, I change my mind somewhat about the grasses. I don't remember which video, but it's not # 1 or #2. possibly not #3,4. not sure. but in one of the videos he just using hairy vetch with tomatoes I believe and grasses with peppers. He open the ground so we could see the result on miccorhizae, which causes the roots to share the water, bacteria and fungi, etc. the massive roots were not a problem.  This was  a different concept to accept until I visually saw it.
 I bought a mixed seed package that I'm going to plant tomorrow.[url=Peaceful Valley Organic Premium Soil Builder Mix - Raw Seed]Peaceful Valley Organic Premium Soil Builder Mix - Raw Seed[/url]
 It fits the suggestion of your aggie friend. Currently the mix contains: Bell Beans, Biomaster or 4010 Peas, Purple Vetch, Hairy Vetch, Common Vetch and Cayuse or Monida Oats.

I do believe the grasses will be a problem with the non miccorhizae plants, so I going to scattered lightly different seeds, mainly some wheat and rye, but they will be one or two seeds  here and there. may also try some winter peas.

this is an experiment of taking the idea down to the SFG beds. will post result. if it works it will be great, because it takes no time to plant a seed here and there.
This is not about preventing erosion, break up the soil, preventing weeds, because we don't have those problems with SFG. but increasing organic matter, nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, attracting beneficial insects, nematodes control and miccorhizae fungi growth is a great goal, if it can be achieved by simply adding some seeds to our beds.
we'll see how it goes.
Patrick on one yard revolution, youtube channel is doing it now with good results. The difference is Patrick doesn't show what happens below the soil and the other guy is dedicated of teaching by visual proof what happening.
also, I'm going to try the self reseeding of my greens beds into the spring. will see how it goes.

sanderson wrote:Just a little sharing, here.  My aggie friend recommended not using "grasses" due to the root density.  I think that was the reason.  Any how, he recommends a mix of seeds, some narrow and deep, some shallow and broad rooted.

This sounds like a great idea. I heard of cover crops last year, just found one or two and went with it..Some good input here is going to make me investigate this topic further. In any event, I sure love looking at the green all winter, at least when I'm able to sit out near the garden.. My deck is close to the garden, when fall close into winter I change things around and half close it in, a roof over head gives me to opportunity to enjoy being outside when winter takes breaks.
I'll sit there with coffee or hot chocolate in hand thinking about the next season..

For any new members, cover crops are not a necessary step.  Mel simplified the process for us.  The Square Foot Gardening technique is so complete that I would call cover cropping a labor of love and an extra curricular activity. The magic is in the compost and Mel's Mix as described in his book.

llama momma wrote:For any new members, cover crops are not a necessary step.  Mel simplified the process for us.  The Square Foot Gardening technique is so complete that I would call cover cropping a labor of love and an extra curricular activity.  The magic is in the compost and Mel's Mix as described in his book.

You said it all...All in the compost.
If I had it to do over, I would learn composting first, a most rewarding task.

jimmy cee wrote:

llama momma wrote:For any new members, cover crops are not a necessary step.  Mel simplified the process for us.  The Square Foot Gardening technique is so complete that I would call cover cropping a labor of love and an extra curricular activity.  The magic is in the compost and Mel's Mix as described in his book.

You said it all...All in the compost.
If I had it to do over, I would learn composting first, a most rewarding task.

Thank you Jimmy for being you and so understanding.  I didn't mean to squash any enthusiasm on your part or anyone else's.  I just try to express retaining the simple yet powerful teachings of Mel!

The funny thing is that many of us longer term ANSFG adherents know that Mel's system works anywhere in the world , it's as cheap as you can get especially if you make a decent amount of home made compost ( Not Mel's starter / initial kick starting mix ) prior to setting up your square foot beds for you can use the quality home made compost neat it has enough drainage , moisture retention  & nutrients on its own.

I've followed these reinvention of the wheel things/ ideas many times , again & again non come anywhere near to Mel's proven idea's .

Even after 40 or so years of row gardening  & the last 18 or so following and eventually fully implementing everything in Mel's last  ANSFG book ( when I joined the site ) , where we now use a non mother earth soil growth medium , I don't see any improvements happening over what Mel said .

I've reread all his three main books many , many times over , some pages , I could almost repeat verbatim . Yet I'm still discovering little gems that had previously eluded me ,  It's like Mel's popped back and inserted a few more interesting & useful lines whilst I'm asleep .

 Honest guys & gals it's a complete system , you don't need other books , you Tube clips  one sided arguments  etc etc. or any additional expenditure of money or a lot of extra hard work energy once you get the system up & going for a couple of years .

So long as you read the manual shown in my strap line time & time again , so you start to understand what Mel has really said you'll not go wrong .

Plantoid ...

An excellent statement

I wholly agreed with what llama and planetoid have to say. this research and development project/experiment is only for people who like tinkering with new ideas. The the ANSFG is sufficient and complete. the R&D Journey is for us tinkerers only. Like working on a car, boat, kitchen appliance etc... It addresses the what if... is there something more curiosity within some of us or have we arrives at all the knowledge we can have in this field. It like saying "all the gold in the world is in China". I wondered is that true?

Thanks Sanderson for changing the name. This thread was started before I realized I needed to separate the name from SFG to prevent confusion. Let the experiments continue. To infinity and beyond.

Bump

I always plant a mixture of Winter Rye (Cereal Rye) and Crimson Clover for the winter cover crops, and in the summer if I have an unused section of the garden I plant Buckwheat on it for a green manure.  But, after seeing this beautiful Ruby Buckwheat, I may have to plant it for the flowers as much as the green manure.  Buckwheat is a very short term cover crop - has to be cut down as soon as it blooms, before it sets seed. But, it provides a lot of mulch when it is cut down and left laying on the soil.




https://www.rareseeds.com/takane-ruby-buckwheat/

OhioGardener wrote:

https://www.rareseeds.com/takane-ruby-buckwheat/

Looks beautiful, like our California native buckwheat, species - Eriogunum grande var. rubescen or San Miguel Island Buckwheat, only darker.

Pretty flowers!

OG what's the latest you can plant cover crops in Ohio?

has55 wrote:OG what's the latest you can plant cover crops in Ohio?

I can get a good stand if I get the seeds in the soil by the end of October. This year was a little unusual in that we didn't really have a fall - the cold weather hit and it never warmed back up for the typical fall weather - so the Winter Rye and Crimson Clover did not get as much top growth as it normally would.

You can barely see the Crimson Clover under the Winter Rye in this picture - normally it would be 3" to 4" tall at this time.

Thank you. I was going to give it a try, but the night temps are 31-45 degrees and the daytime 50 to '70s. I don't know if they will germinate.

has55 wrote:Thank you. I was going to give it a try, but the night temps are 31-45 degrees and the daytime 50 to '70s. I don't know if they will germinate.

Yes, Winter Rye (Cereal Rye) will easily germinate down to 34°F, so in your area you can still get a good stand of it.  One thing I love about Winter Rye is that is sends its roots down 3' to 4' down into the ground, and brings up the minerals and nutrients to the surface. Another good thing about it is that in spring when the Rye is about 6" to 8" tall, I cut it off at the soil level and leave the cuttings for mulch and the plants die and decompose in the ground to open it up for the vegetable roots.

Ohio, loving those flowers and your post made me think.

I see a lot of folks believe that cover crops are an extra curricular activity, reinventing the wheel or tinkering with an already perfect system.

I'm curious as to what folks do at the end of the season with putting their beds to sleep, do you cover with leaves, mulch, plastic?
What if you have "0" resources?

There's more to cover crops than most know.

My opinion as a cover crop user,
They suit more than one purpose.
They are not merely to add bio-mass or to feed microbes and earthworms, but they also can scavenge nitrogen, be used as a nitrogen catch crop to prevent leeching, prevent erosion, are a great mulch, green manure, suppress weeds, help control pests and disease, help beneficial insects and wildlife, can be used as animal forage, look attractive as Ohio Gardener pointed out.

Cover crops do not need to flower to help beneficial insects.



It is cheaper for me to plant oats as a cover crop than it is to buy mulch. If I had "0" resources and was to buy bagged mulch to cover my beds it would take 12 bags of mulch @ $3.00 a bag, thats $36.00.


I bought a 40 pound bag of oats for $15.00 and so far used maybe 6 pounds in the last two years.
That's 37 cents a pound.
This year it cost me $1.11 in oats to do my beds.


Plus you can start cover drops early by under-cropping to get a jump on the cover crop.



Plus I get a few more months of my beds still looking green








And not like this





I even do my planters.

SQWIB wrote:Ohio, loving those flowers and your post made me think.

I see a lot of folks believe that cover crops are an extra curricular activity, reinventing the wheel or tinkering with an already perfect system.

I'm curious as to what folks do at the end of the season with putting their beds to sleep, do you cover with leaves, mulch, plastic?
What if you have "0" resources?

There's more to cover crops than most know.

My opinion as a cover crop user,
They suit more than one purpose.
They are not merely to add bio-mass or to feed microbes and earthworms, but they also can scavenge nitrogen, be used as a nitrogen catch crop to prevent leeching, prevent erosion, are a great mulch, green manure, suppress weeds, help control pests and disease, help beneficial insects and wildlife, can be used as animal forage, look attractive as Ohio Gardener pointed out.

i have been "organic farming/gardening" for well over 50 years - before the term "organic gardening" was popularized - and cover crops and crop rotation has always been a way of life, just as planting "green manure" crops of fallow ground in order to both protect the soil from the elements and enrich the soil. This year, for the second time, I used "living mulch" with my peppers by sowing Crimson Clover seed around the young transplants - the clover got about 3" tall before it got smothered under the shade of the peppers, but the withered tops provided mulch the rest of the summer.  A number of years ago, in a former life, I actually had a published article on the value of using Red Clover as a living mulch in Pecan groves to both control weeds and eliminate mowing requirements, and to provide nitrogen to the trees. Many orchards still do that.

And, by the time you get to my age, Old habits die hard... 

Today I received the eletter from Urban, titled "Spring is Coming!", and discussed the benefits of Spring Cover Crops, namely

1. Increased Nitrogen Fixation
2. Add organic matter and weed suppression
3. Attracts pollinators such as birds and insects

This got my spring planting juices flowing, and made me wonder about the benefits of using a spring cover crop in some beds.  I have never done spring cover crops, though I always use a mixture of Winter Rye and Crimson Clover for winter cover crops and have always had good success with them.  I never "till in" the cover crop as suggested by most sites, including this article by Urban Farmer, but rather cut them off at ground level and leave the cuttings as mulch. Cutting them off also leaves the roots in the ground to decay and feed the soil and future plants.

I won't need or want spring cover crops in most of my raised beds since I will be planting them before crop is ready to kill off.  But, I have two 12' beds that will be reserved for squash and cucumbers, and they won't be planted until mid-June or after the squash bug hatch out has passed. What I'm wondering about is planting a cover crop in those beds, and then planting the squash & cucumber within the cover crop instead of killing off the plants first. A cover crop such as Crimson Clover, which never gets very tall, would continue feeding the soil while the squash & cucumbers are pulling the nutrients out of the soil, and would suppress any weeds that might try to grow.

Thoughts on this?

I was wondering the same thing for tomatoes and cucumber and melons. Will crimson clover grow in Texas? You said it never get tall. I have been pretty busy but this has been on my mind for a few months. I have a cover crop growing now of a mixture of organic common vetch, bell beans, cayese oat and field peas. This is the first time for me. I bought them from peaceful valley. I just planted snow peas into them this week. It was very easy. I used a long handle finger hoe to make a tiny furrow and drop the seeds, step on them and push the soil back over it with the hoe. I just walk and drop the seeds in from my waist, no bending. Took about 10 mins to do 5 beds.

Just wondering 2 things. If the clover is still growing but it's time to plant the summer veggies, can't the clover be snipped off at Mix level and left to dry as mulch. Second, if the clover is left to grow, won't it be a competitor for water and nutrients other than nitrogen?

has55 wrote:I was wondering the same thing for tomatoes and cucumber and melons. Will crimson clover grow in Texas?

I did that with peppers last year and it was pretty successful in keeping the soil shaded and covered until the peppers got big and started shading the clover. After the pepper shade got pretty heavy, the crimson clover died and left a mulch of the dried plants on the soil.

Don't know about whether it will grow in Texas or not - I've never gardened there. But, check out this SARE article on Crimson Clover.


An important thing to remember with Crimson Clover is that if it starts blooming, cut off the blooms so that it will no reseed itself. It is an annual, and if the blooms are cut off it will no re-grow after it dies back.

sanderson wrote:Just wondering 2 things.  If the clover is still growing but it's time to plant the summer veggies, can't the clover be snipped off at Mix level and left to dry as mulch.  Second, if the clover is left to grow, won't it be a competitor for water and nutrients other than nitrogen?

Answer to first question is Yes - that is what I do with my winter cover crops. After they have reached sufficient height, I cut them off at soil level and leave the tops for mulch. The roots then decompose and aerate the soil.

Answer to the second question is Maybe, a little. But, it also shades the soil and prevents evaporation of soil moisture. Crimson Clover is a very light feeder, and I always inoculate the seeds with Rhizobium bacteria to increase the amount of nitrogen they pull out of the air and store in the soil.  If I keep the cover crop on the beds, I will have to monitor the moisture level to see what, if any, impact it has.

Thank you.