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Post by seedywen on Jul 10, 2011 15:46:58 GMT -5
Please share your favorite cover crop ideas.
Especially ideas involving, interplanting between wide rows.
I'm still using some wide rows with crops like corn, beans and tomatoes because here on the Wet Coast, experience has demonstrated that ventilation between individual plants/rows is important, to prevent some of the diseases that accompany high annual rainfall.
Have used buckwheat, fallrye, white clover, broad beans and lately kale with some success.
Now would like to expand my repetoire of soil building techniques and figure there are people on this forum that have tried interplanting cover crops that probably I've not heard of or perhaps, even imagined.
Alternately am also interested in your experiences planting Phacelia and Crimson Clover as recently got bees and starting on thinking how I can grow even more plants for them.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 10, 2011 16:20:01 GMT -5
My most common cover crop is weeds. I prefer annual seedlings over perennial rhizomes. I don't happily allow morning glory, Johnson's grass, milkweed, or thistles to grow as cover crops. (Only if I get behind on weeding.) I have a short slow growing clover with yellow blossoms that thrives in my garden. I'm pretty sure that it is not winter hardy. I often allow it to grow and go to seed. It doesn't overwhelm anything, and it dies easily when tilled. It attracts honey bees though, so I can't wear sandals in the garden when it is blooming.
I plant rows of spinach on either side of summer squash. By the time the summer squash starts growing well the spinach is ready to be tilled under. I could do the same thing with lettuce, melons, and turnips.
I'm growing phacelia (purple tansy) this summer for the first time. It germinated readily and quickly outgrew most of the weeds except morning glory. It hasn't started blooming yet.
While I have only planted it as a crop and not as a cover-crop, I could sow winter wheat if I got my garden tilled soon enough in the fall. (Which rarely happens.)
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Post by 12540dumont on Jul 10, 2011 19:08:41 GMT -5
We've been using fava beans and Crimson clover planted in late fall. By May they are done. The bees like both. Attachments:
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Post by 12540dumont on Jul 10, 2011 19:22:25 GMT -5
This year I am also experimenting with various crops that I call border crops. I put in Jerusalem artichokes as a trap crop for gophers. A perimeter of sunflowers for the bees and chicken feed. Kenaf as a windscreeen. And finally I've been working on a border that's full of beneficial insect flowers, grains and chicken greens. I put in a swath of this between crops and run the chickens through. The photo shows the house and yard. They clean up the bugs, do some free tilling, eat the greens and then I'm ready to roll another crop in. Right now they are between the grapes and squash. The mix they are eating is spring brooder greens from Sand Hill, mixed with cilantro, parsley, barley, wheat, cilantro, etc. So, this week I'm going to pull out potatoes, then I'll sprinkle the seeds, rake a wee bit. Turn on a sprinkler, move it a few times and the weeds, and these greens and flowers will come up. In 3 weeks I'll move the chickens here. By August 15, this bed will be ready to be composted, tilled and replanted to fall crops. My portable chicken pen covers 2 and a path. It could use some tinkering, but it's coming along. I'm waiting for Joseph to send me some radish grex...hint, hint, so that I can mix it in. I'm interested in lots more things. We did a lot of carrots between rows. Especially when we planted the onions. They are so small. Attachments:
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Post by atash on Jul 10, 2011 21:17:42 GMT -5
Sub-clover (Trifolium subterraneum) and low-growing Medics (Medicago species NOT alfalfa which at least in my climate is too tall).
They work well for hardy fall-planted cereals because their life-cycle is similar. They come up with the autumn rains, live over the winter and through the spring, reseed, and die off when they run out of water and/or it gets too hot, but leaving behind their dead growth as a mulch. They stay low enough to stay out of the way of cereals. Replant your cereals and the living mulch seeds are already in the soil waiting to germinate with fall rains.
If you want bee plants sub-clover is not the best choice as its blossoms are small and obscure. But it's a good seeder, low-growing, and fairly coldhardy.
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Post by steev on Jul 10, 2011 21:18:55 GMT -5
Mat beans?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 10, 2011 23:03:50 GMT -5
low-growing Medics (Medicago species NOT alfalfa which at least in my climate is too tall). Thanks. That's what mine is: Medicago lupulina. In my garden it grows as an annual. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Starr_051202-5595_Medicago_lupulina.jpgMy new field has blossoming alfalfa now. Send a personal message if anyone wants me to collect some seeds for you. I could also collect medic seeds. |
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Post by raymondo on Jul 11, 2011 4:41:14 GMT -5
I don't till. Slashed green manures are simply left where they fall. I've given up on grasses (oats, rye and so on) as they're a pain if you leave them too long.
I plant beans, cowpeas, buckwheat mid/late summer to die with the first killing frost and leave a cover over winter on beds I'm not using.
Peas or fenugreek as winter cover. I dump mulch on them late winter/early spring which seems to kill them off.
This year I'm trying sweet lupins on new beds as I've heard they have a good deep taproot. I'll slash them a few weeks before I need the bed.
I want to encourage more clovers.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Jul 11, 2011 6:12:20 GMT -5
Carrots have not done well for us in our weed replacement program. We are trying out sunflowers for the first time. So far mustard type greens and field peas are doing the best and they are doing the best in the cornfield.
I really want to acquire a bee attractive clover and make a thick seed distribution over a portion of the lawn. Can't do the whole lawn because I don't want to step on the bees, but I would like a nice thick patch for them to feed on. The lupines would also be part of the weed replacement program. Anyone know if they produce a honey bee attractive nectar?
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Post by bunkie on Jul 11, 2011 8:28:09 GMT -5
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Post by ottawagardener on Jul 11, 2011 8:53:51 GMT -5
This response is a lot of babbling so hopefully there's something useful in it.
A couple of my favourite interplantings are a row of short, quick maturing peas between wide rows of potatoes. Once the peas are harvested, I just cut them down and the potato plants grow up over the spot they were planted. Interplanting carrots with onions and some sort of flower like marigolds/nigella/short cosmos. Not my idea but it's supposed to help confuse pests. Lettuce/cabbage works well. I'm playing with the idea of underplanting tomatoes with clover as I've heard of this. Any try it?
I know Hida Manns mostly lets the 'native' flora grow between her rows and cuts it to keep it from overcompeting with her crops. I'm a mulcher mostly but I let various edible weeds grow to harvest including puslane, lamb's quarters, even dandelion (though I pull this before it sets seed or at least try to). Corn salad grows well under tall, lightly shading crops. I've found my ground cherry grows better in part shade and have traditionally been planted between corn.
I'm guessing you really want ideas for what to grow in the pathes? I have a large path that I want to seed to for cutting and have been thinking of using something that makes a nice green manure when cut like white clover. Bees are an issue though. I might just use the usual mix of white clover and grass. I've thought of others but it is a tried and true mix. I like buckwheat but I haven't seen it surpress anything yet. Maybe I need to plant them more thickly. Comfrey would probably do a great job as would horseradish but good luck getting rid of them.
I usually leave sweet clover, phacelia, and red clover in place when I find them wild to cut as a green manure the following year. Next year, in fact, I plan on collecting seeds of these.
Most of my green manure is the local weeds though which includes a lot of annual weeds in this garden because of previous practices. In my old garden, most of the disturbed soil turned up edibles like chicory - the broad leafed ones do a good job at weed suppression and have a nice taproot. Probably look into this one as a green manure actually. I can see kale doing a good job as long as you didn't need to rotate due to disease. I had lots of volunteers in my last garden.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Jul 11, 2011 9:56:48 GMT -5
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Post by atash on Jul 11, 2011 12:10:17 GMT -5
I dunno much about Sweet Lupine even though in theory I have a patch of them somewhere, but the native Lupines are quite nectiferous and attractive to bumblebees. Feral honeybees have gotten rare here, but I imagine they would be attracted for the same reasons.
Some Lupines are fragrant, and these are good for attracting bees.
Some Lupines spread but many do not. I should think the former would make better underplanting crops than the latter. I would probably mix Lupine with other Legumes to make sure the ground was well-covered. Actually since most of my Lupines are perennial I use them in marginal areas that I don't have plowed. For some reason I've never been able to get annual Lupines established, except the few that show up on their own.
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Post by seedywen on Jul 11, 2011 14:32:28 GMT -5
Thanks for all the descriptions of your cover crops. Has given me more ideas to try. Even learned the name of one of my favorite weeds. Medicago lupulina.
Now I'll stop harvesting the flowers/vines and feeding them to the rabbits and goats, and let them go more purposefully to seed.
The particular gardening challenge that I'm attempting to problem solve is the fact that the corn crop, most summers rarely matures before mid-September and often not until early/ mid-October. That leaves it to late to remove the stalks and plant most overwintering cover crops. So usually weeds are the main winter cover crop in that area of the garden.
I interplanted buckwheat at the same time this year as the corn, in early June. Now I'm cutting the buckwheat down and it's making a nice mulch although not as thick that it will prevent new weeds from sprouting. So I presprouted wheat and threw the seed generously between the corn rows. Give the weeds, some competition.
The Phacelia is growing great guns, nice and thick, suppressing the weeds and just about ready to flower. Hoping to get seeds so can use this annual more frequently as a cover crop.
Have sown quick crops like spinach and lettuce between the corn but only early in the season.
1/3 of my garden is no till and in this area, I've got the interplanting and deep mulch working out very well from year to year. However there's not enough mulch to have the same success in the main garden. Hence the cover crop questing.
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Post by ottawagardener on Jul 11, 2011 16:31:23 GMT -5
Interplanting and covercropping are subjects that I am very interested in as well so I hope people keep them coming!
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