Cover crop ideas

[Salaam]

Hello all,

I am considering cover crops on my 1800sqft remote garden. The garden will be tilled with s tines in fall. I am thinking of sowing red clover late fall then mowing (or flailling) and tilling in spring before planting vegetables. Or maybe doing that just in the beds to be planted and leaving the clover in the walkways, which I will mow once in a while. What do you think? The main goal of the cover crop is soil fertility.

[bower]

Clovers will add N by fixing it themselves. Some are not winter hardy, but the red clover is. So you can get some early N fixing before you're ready to till and sow your crops next spring. Winter rye is a cover used to scavenge N left over from your crops. Mallow (perennial) is also said to be a great N scavenger. Both of those have to be tilled in. Buckwheat iirc fixes some N itself but mainly adds bioavailable potassium and phosphorus for the next crop. It winterkills so tilling not required. Tillage radish is another source of K and P in a cover crop, which kills completely and decomposes in the winter (but that depends on your winter). Buckwheat will grow pretty quickly even late in the season, so it will add something. The radish OTOH needs to be planted earlier to do its job.
Some info on different greencrops here:
https://www.damseeds.com/collections/agreencrops
They are in Ontario.

[Mark_Thompson]

Don’t think our climates are similar, but this is a good starting point for cover crop info, they have a nice comparison chart. I’m using their “sod buster” mix currently and I like it. Do you know what your soil is lacking?

https://www.groworganic.com/collections ... crop-seeds

[Cole_Robbie]

There is a daikon radish sold under the trademark name groundhog radish that does well in my climate to break up clay, add organic matter and attract earthworms.

[bjbebs]

Cover-Crops-for-Home-Garden-A3933-02 (1).pdf

For me in zone 5b its buckwheat in warmer weather and grain rye as the weather cools. You could put in rye now and by mid Dec. you would have a good crop to turn under before the ground freezes. Cereal rye will put down 10" roots in short order if your soils are loose.
If you use a cover crop in your walkways you could use these in a crop rotation plan. Every 3rd year, plant your tilled walkways and move your walkways over.
I'm not a fan of planting into a cover crop as I prefer to add the green to the soils to feed the worms.
I've seen the benefits of cover cropping but it's a long term plan not something that transforms poor soils quickly.

[Salaam]

I'll probably go with the medium red clover as it fixes nitrogen and can be mowed, so it would be good for the walkways between rows.

[zendog]

I've been doing a mix of Austrian Winter Peas, Crimson Clover, hairy (or sometimes woolly) vetch and daikon, going heavy on the peas. I'm in 7a, so all of these live through our winters and we use the pea shoots in salads, etc., particularly in the early Spring when they really take off again. In 5a, you'd probably have all of these winter kill, so red clover sounds like a good choice, but you might try some winter peas if you think you have enough time to get some size on them. I mostly just cut them down and mulch over them in the Spring, but when I check the roots the clover always has some nice nitrogen nodules, but the peas are even more impressive. Where I grow my okra I just use straight peas and without any fertilizing the okra will easily top 8 feet by fall.

[lee53011]

I am in Zone 5 also. I love tillage radishes. My wife actually likes to eat them! I plant in late summer inbetween my other crops and in any areas that I harvest crops. They grow thick and long, and die in the winter. They rot in spring and leave a nice big hole that the compost that I top my beds with falls into. They also release their nutrients as they rot, so they are available for my spring crops. I never till, the radishes do it for me!

[Shule]

Another great reason to grow buckwheat is that it has totally awesome flowers. It's supposed to be good for soil structure, too, I believe. I've never actually grown it, but take a look:

https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetab ... -buckwheat

[PoisonApple]

I lead a community donation garden and I’ve been thinking about options for really low maintenance ‘green mulch.’ One that is attractive to me is crimson clover as a cover/complain during the growing season. I’ve been thinking about 36 inch rows between peppers, tomatoes, beets, etc that can be mowed weekly. Clover could also just cover squash hills. Clover seems to be good at choking out weeds which would be nice to have low maintenance since volunteer labor isn’t always easy to get to show up regularly enough to keep the weeds in check. Also seems like clover shouldn’t create as much nitrogen competition as other cover options. What do you think? Any big pathology issues with this approach?