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Post by raymondo on Nov 2, 2013 4:11:50 GMT -5
The idea fascinates me. I really hope it works out. What a boon if it does. I'll watch this space with interest.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2013 17:22:24 GMT -5
Please share your favorite cover crop ideas. Especially ideas involving, interplanting between wide rows. ... 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. As a freshman here, I quote the very first entry. Next year I´ll seed bokhara clover in March and cut it only where giant pumpkins occupy space then. In autumn I spaded up organic matter very deep and added dolomite now onto the frozen soil. Bokhara clover is a best honey plant and so is also named Honigklee in German. |
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Post by jondear on Mar 3, 2014 20:55:59 GMT -5
Last fall after having some germination issues, I mixed all my lettuce, greens, cabbage, spinach, radichio and the like into a bowl and planted a heck of a salad patch. Double duty of cover crop and salad from October through the middle of November. Hoping for spring greens once all the snow melts.
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Post by Al on Dec 7, 2014 4:14:21 GMT -5
I love the idea of a 'heck of a salad patch' as a cover crop with the chance that it will yield some leaves for the table Autumn & maybe Spring. I will experiment with a seed mix which I can sow as ground is cleared.
I have a large area sowed with Claytonia (Miners Lettuce), & a few rows of Lambs Lettuce (Corn Salad or Mâché) as a hardy cover crop, but it never occurred to me to mix them up. I guess Beet, Raddichio, Rocket, etc. could go in the mix. I was pleased to find I can easily save & replant seed of Claytonia & Lambs Lettuce.
My bean patch was entirely sowed with Broad beans (again with saved seeds) after legume crops were cleared & the rows are all standing proud & healthy (about 30 cm high) , not sure how they will overwinter or when I'll dig them in. But feel sure they will improve the soil.
Next year I hope to try Caliente Greens ( a type of mustard) as a cover crop on the brassica patch. This will be dug in & chopped, apparently some out gassing from Caliente can act as a bio-fumigant against dormant onion white rot. Alliums will follow on this ground.
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 7, 2014 10:23:09 GMT -5
Chenopodium giganteum makes an excellent cover crop I've discovered and I've taken to thickly broadcasting field peas anywhere I've harvested and am not planning on replanting as it is winter killed.
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Post by flowerweaver on Dec 7, 2014 10:51:22 GMT -5
Here where I live C. giganteum is not winter killed. I usually let some of it go to seed, but really must harvest most of the seed heads or else it will take over my property. I harvest the early spring sprouts for eating, so it's sort of a weeding pleasure.
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Post by MikeH on Dec 7, 2014 14:27:04 GMT -5
Chenopodium giganteum makes an excellent cover crop I've discovered and I've taken to thickly broadcasting field peas anywhere I've harvested and am not planning on replanting as it is winter killed. The plants that I got from you did well although not gigantically so. I harvested a fair bit of seed. The seed itself is quite crunchy. I plan to dedicate a raised bed to it for the biomass and nutrient mining benefits of Chenopodiums - sun.ars-grin.gov:8080/npgspub/xsql/duke/plantdisp.xsql?taxon=249 |
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Post by Al on Dec 7, 2014 15:43:00 GMT -5
That's great to know Chenopdium Giganteum (Tree Spinach) can be a useful cover crop. I had a row this year which got 8 feet tall, I was impressed by how good it was to eat, really spinachy. Someone said it is best to blanch briefly, discard the water, then cook in fresh water. Something to do with high acid content I think. I had planned to only grow a couple of plants next year but will now think of how to use it as a green manure.
Maybe a few sowings to see how it can cope with the Scottish weather at different stages of growth. I assumed it would be killed by frost, but hundreds of seedlings grow from a pinch of seed so it's easy to produce a lot of plants to experiment with.
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 9, 2014 11:17:14 GMT -5
I've never had to blanch C. gigateum. I would think that the concern was oxalic acid just like in spinach but maybe only in high nitrogen soil would you have to be really worried. Anyhow, I eat it all the time without any obvious problem.
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 9, 2014 11:18:08 GMT -5
Eating the seed Mike? Interesting because it produces a bumper crop. Was it soapy or bitter?
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Post by blackox on Dec 9, 2014 16:28:38 GMT -5
If legal in your area, P. Somniferum poppies might make a good cover crop. Don't think that add anything to the soil or anything though. Just another idea.
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Post by 12540dumont on Dec 9, 2014 19:37:23 GMT -5
Or you could just be like me....forget the seed packages in the field and they blow all over, losing your lettuce... and causing spouse to mutter under his breath.
Acch...that was an expensive cover crop.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 9, 2014 19:56:38 GMT -5
About the only crops I could plant around here that would grow well as an overwinter cover crop are wheat or rye.
I was doing some calculations the other day... It would require about 200 pounds of winter rye to seed my fields. So I either have to buy that, or grow it myself. I don't know if I'd be up to manually harvesting a patch of rye 100 feet long and 17 feet wide which is about what it would take to grow that much seed. Unless I hooked up with a farmer that would sell me bulk seed straight from the combine, it's too pricey to buy seed for cover crops.
Perhaps I could get clever about how I grow rye... What if I grew rye as a companion crop with everything that I grow? And it took up about 0.5% to 1% of the growing space in the garden? That would produce the required number of seeds to fully plant a cover crop. Then in the fall I could just till the fields under whenever I get around to it, and the rye would germinate and create a lush cover crop for the winter. I already do that sorta, because the wheat and rye volunteer wherever I grew the patch last year. With this type of scenario I'd only have to harvest a pound or two of seed in order to replant the crop next year. That would sure change the appearance of my garden...
Winter rye isn't particularly weedy for me. It dies easily when disturbed. I grow plenty of cover crops on fallow ground during the summer: Mixed species of weeds.
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Post by steev on Dec 9, 2014 21:18:27 GMT -5
Papaver somniferum is commonly illegal, though ignored if not grown in "flying monkey-sized patches", Dorothy. If you're scratching and scraping the seedpods, however, you're in a world of "narc", to coin a phrase. Some South-East Asians, having immigrated to opium-averse North America, have been reported to make a tisane from the pods, to suit their needs/inclinations; humans are so adaptable.
This is in no way to suggest that I would approve or promote the cultivation of P. somniferum for any illegal purpose, no matter how private or harmless.
There is a story that Groucho Marx remarked in an interview that the President (I forget which) "should be shot". The FBI came to investigate "advocating assassination of the President", asking whether he'd said that. Groucho reportedly replied "Of course not; I never speak the truth!" What a mensch!
Is that a thick enough "creative cover crop"?
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Post by reed on Dec 10, 2014 5:35:19 GMT -5
I just have small gardens and used to didn't do anything but for a few years now I have used turnips for winter cover. It seems to work pretty good but they are often in the way the next spring. My spots are small enough though that I can just pull and compost any really big ones. I haven't done this before but this year I'm going to leave some here and there to seed.
In the new spot I borrowed from the neighbor for corn I planted diakon radishes and the deer ate them all. I'll get the fence up soon. This spot is much bigger and on top of the others I won't be able to hand weed and hoe everything like I always have. I was thinking once the corn is established and thinned I will lightly till between the rows and broadcast more radishes, turnips and bush green beans. If they start getting too big and competing too much with the corn I will mow them down. Later when the corn is waste high or so I will mow again if necessary and plant some shorter season pole beans here and there. In my experience it isn't a good idea to plant pole beans on corn unless the corn has a real good head start.
When the corn is nice and tall hopefully, I can just let the surviving bush beans/turnips/radishes do what ever they want and have enough go to seed and recover the place for late fall into winter. Again, hopefully, I can go through and harvest pole beans from the corn stalks as they dry down.
Don't know if it will work but it's the best I got right now on how to deal with more garden than I'll have time for. I'm excited about the possibility of those radishes, plant em, mow em, let some regrow and self seed for fall, might just work. I hope.
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