Cover Cropping: The LAZIEST Way to Improve Your Soil
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Date: 2022-07-18
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Comments and reviews: 15
Nicolas
Hmm unfortunately you forgot the simplest and easiest way to destroy a cover crop: to roll it or squash it down. I just use a wood pallet for that, but you can use snowshoes, a plank of wood, a lawn roller, etc. When your cover crop is well into flower, it's the easiest way to destroy it. If you cut down grasses like rye or wheat, it might grow back and try again. While if you roll it over, it will die for sure. I usually cover that with a bit of spent barley and wood chips, and it makes for a perfect no till bed to transplant summer veggies like tomatoes, squashes etc. it's incredibly productive. My winter cover crop is a mixture of rye, phacelia, fava beans, winter peas, vech, and sometimes daikon. I don't use mustard coz it flowers too quickly, while all the other one except phacelia flower around early May.
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Hmm unfortunately you forgot the simplest and easiest way to destroy a cover crop: to roll it or squash it down. I just use a wood pallet for that, but you can use snowshoes, a plank of wood, a lawn roller, etc. When your cover crop is well into flower, it's the easiest way to destroy it. If you cut down grasses like rye or wheat, it might grow back and try again. While if you roll it over, it will die for sure. I usually cover that with a bit of spent barley and wood chips, and it makes for a perfect no till bed to transplant summer veggies like tomatoes, squashes etc. it's incredibly productive. My winter cover crop is a mixture of rye, phacelia, fava beans, winter peas, vech, and sometimes daikon. I don't use mustard coz it flowers too quickly, while all the other one except phacelia flower around early May.
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gaming
Hey guys to anyone looking to maximize theyre growing potential as well as create a balanced soil ecosystem, look into NO TILL. Tilling your soil distrubs your ecosystem youve built! Instead feed the soil by amending it before during and after your growing season. Chop your cover crop and just let it decompose without tilling. Once youve built an ecosystem with the fungi, bacteria, and beneficial insects youll ne surprised at how your crops are going to grow! Dont use gmo products in your garden like blood meal and bone meal, use neem seed meal for your nitrogen as well ass fish meal, use fish bone meal for your phosphorus as well asl CA- PHOS, and for pottasium you can use a quality compost or water in some coconut water or some seaweed extracts. NO TILL is the way to go
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Hey guys to anyone looking to maximize theyre growing potential as well as create a balanced soil ecosystem, look into NO TILL. Tilling your soil distrubs your ecosystem youve built! Instead feed the soil by amending it before during and after your growing season. Chop your cover crop and just let it decompose without tilling. Once youve built an ecosystem with the fungi, bacteria, and beneficial insects youll ne surprised at how your crops are going to grow! Dont use gmo products in your garden like blood meal and bone meal, use neem seed meal for your nitrogen as well ass fish meal, use fish bone meal for your phosphorus as well asl CA- PHOS, and for pottasium you can use a quality compost or water in some coconut water or some seaweed extracts. NO TILL is the way to go
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Richard
No till planting, crop rotation and cover crops are the key not only for soil health but also as help for our climate. Healthy soil is a carbon depository that needs very little fertilizer or harmful pest control chemicals. Instead, the healthy soil absorbs atmospheric carbon that fuels the biodiversity below ground. Monoculture farming with no cover crops and constant tilling exposes the life-giving soil to the atmosphere where carbon fills the air and leads to weather changes, global warming. 90 million acres of commercial farmland all using archaic methods and hundreds of millions of acres worldwide doing the same explains a great deal of the global warming origins. Every farmer and home garden enthusiast should read The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson.
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No till planting, crop rotation and cover crops are the key not only for soil health but also as help for our climate. Healthy soil is a carbon depository that needs very little fertilizer or harmful pest control chemicals. Instead, the healthy soil absorbs atmospheric carbon that fuels the biodiversity below ground. Monoculture farming with no cover crops and constant tilling exposes the life-giving soil to the atmosphere where carbon fills the air and leads to weather changes, global warming. 90 million acres of commercial farmland all using archaic methods and hundreds of millions of acres worldwide doing the same explains a great deal of the global warming origins. Every farmer and home garden enthusiast should read The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson.
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Richard
I love cover crops! One minor peeve from the video is that all cover crops act as carbon pumps, putting exudates in the soil to feed the soil microbiome, not just brassicas. Grasses that use the C4 photosynthetic pathway are especially good at this in warm climates (sorghum-sudangrass for example. Brassicas also aren't helping maintain the mycorrhizal networks in the soil, so other varieties of crops are important to help bolster those.
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I love cover crops! One minor peeve from the video is that all cover crops act as carbon pumps, putting exudates in the soil to feed the soil microbiome, not just brassicas. Grasses that use the C4 photosynthetic pathway are especially good at this in warm climates (sorghum-sudangrass for example. Brassicas also aren't helping maintain the mycorrhizal networks in the soil, so other varieties of crops are important to help bolster those.
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Nenemaria
Great ideas there! I'm on the coast in the UK so it doesn't get super cold here, I mainly plant kale, chard and other brassicas over winter as a cover crop. Lettuce and other salad greens work well too, a bonus being you can pick the outer leaves (though they often don't get big enough for much of a harvest with only 7 hours of daylight. I'm making more of an effort this year to leave no bed empty.
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Great ideas there! I'm on the coast in the UK so it doesn't get super cold here, I mainly plant kale, chard and other brassicas over winter as a cover crop. Lettuce and other salad greens work well too, a bonus being you can pick the outer leaves (though they often don't get big enough for much of a harvest with only 7 hours of daylight. I'm making more of an effort this year to leave no bed empty.
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Chief
I grew up on a Texas farm.
When we first moved onto the land, it had been conventionally farmed for decades so it was dry, dead dirt.
After my dad started planting cover crops, the soil became rich, black soil filled with life that produced bigger crop yields.
Read the book Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown if you want to understand how to save our planet by building healthy soil.
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I grew up on a Texas farm.
When we first moved onto the land, it had been conventionally farmed for decades so it was dry, dead dirt.
After my dad started planting cover crops, the soil became rich, black soil filled with life that produced bigger crop yields.
Read the book Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown if you want to understand how to save our planet by building healthy soil.
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Lisa
Kevin, I live several borders south. Here we only have two seasons: dry season and rainy season, both 6 months long. In the dry season when watering is possible planting can be done year around. I'm now planting in containers but I would like to do it in container beds. My question is do I need to do cover crops or just a crop rotation?
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Kevin, I live several borders south. Here we only have two seasons: dry season and rainy season, both 6 months long. In the dry season when watering is possible planting can be done year around. I'm now planting in containers but I would like to do it in container beds. My question is do I need to do cover crops or just a crop rotation?
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Jeff
Last year I bought a couple of bales of straw to mulch my garden. I wasn't expecting them to be full of seeds, and I inadvertently cover cropped my entire garden with barley. raised beds, paths, everything.
Fortunately that stuff pulls up easily, so before it went to seed I simply yanked it out and threw it back on the ground.
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Last year I bought a couple of bales of straw to mulch my garden. I wasn't expecting them to be full of seeds, and I inadvertently cover cropped my entire garden with barley. raised beds, paths, everything.
Fortunately that stuff pulls up easily, so before it went to seed I simply yanked it out and threw it back on the ground.
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Cynthia
This is the best explanation and examples of cover cropping I have seen! Thank you for breaking this down (pun intended) in a way that makes sense! There is a lot information on what to plant but not what to do with it to get the soil ready to plant spring crops! Thank you so very much!
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This is the best explanation and examples of cover cropping I have seen! Thank you for breaking this down (pun intended) in a way that makes sense! There is a lot information on what to plant but not what to do with it to get the soil ready to plant spring crops! Thank you so very much!
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Gardening
I had to laugh at one of the other commenters. They said they just do a cover crop of snow. Set it and forget it. I am in Ky. In a winter day we can have all the seasons. While i have all the stuff needed for my hoop house i havent gotten the energy up yet. One day soon i hope.
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I had to laugh at one of the other commenters. They said they just do a cover crop of snow. Set it and forget it. I am in Ky. In a winter day we can have all the seasons. While i have all the stuff needed for my hoop house i havent gotten the energy up yet. One day soon i hope.
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Sow
This is JUST the video i was needing! But i am contemplating trying wicking beds out here in the cali desert. containter gardened the first year, in ground beds the following but they just dont get the water they need in our sandy soil. hoping for more sucess this coming spring
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This is JUST the video i was needing! But i am contemplating trying wicking beds out here in the cali desert. containter gardened the first year, in ground beds the following but they just dont get the water they need in our sandy soil. hoping for more sucess this coming spring
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Stephen
Good video. I do this every Fall but I leave holes in my raised beds for spinach, radish broccoli, etc for winter crops here in 9b Sacramento. I usually turn in my cover crops by Feb so that I can plant veggies in March or April and get my hot peppers in by May.
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Good video. I do this every Fall but I leave holes in my raised beds for spinach, radish broccoli, etc for winter crops here in 9b Sacramento. I usually turn in my cover crops by Feb so that I can plant veggies in March or April and get my hot peppers in by May.
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Alan
I live in Los Angeles and Oxalis pes-caprae covers my property from October through March. It will choke out any low growing shrubs, but is it beneficial as a cover crop? Chop and drop OR just let it die back on its own? Any other thoughts on using your weeds?
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I live in Los Angeles and Oxalis pes-caprae covers my property from October through March. It will choke out any low growing shrubs, but is it beneficial as a cover crop? Chop and drop OR just let it die back on its own? Any other thoughts on using your weeds?
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Michael
I live in East Tennessee. I use the daikon radish as a clay buster. They grow so quickly and robustly here. They dig better than moles. I also use premium and cheap mixes of cover crops just to mix things up. Keep your soil busy so it doesnt go away.
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I live in East Tennessee. I use the daikon radish as a clay buster. They grow so quickly and robustly here. They dig better than moles. I also use premium and cheap mixes of cover crops just to mix things up. Keep your soil busy so it doesnt go away.
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Rick
Chop and drop for no till gardens you could use a lawn mower with no bag, or if you want to remove use the bag at the back of the mower.
Chop and drop for till gardens you could just use the matching plug on the mower to make the leaves very small.
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Chop and drop for no till gardens you could use a lawn mower with no bag, or if you want to remove use the bag at the back of the mower.
Chop and drop for till gardens you could just use the matching plug on the mower to make the leaves very small.
reply
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