Harry's Chelsea garden, The School Food Matters Garden
12.06.2023 - 01:11 / gardenerspath.com / Nan Schiller
Should You Rotate Cover Crops?Cover crops are fast-growing plants that we sow densely to cover fallow soil.
Cover cropping is a common farming practice, with applications for smaller scale plots and raised beds where flowers, fruits, herbs, and vegetables grow as well.
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Our guide to cover cropping discusses how to use the technique in the home garden.
This article focuses on rotating cover crops rather than growing the same ones in the same places from year to year.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Let’s start with a brief review.
What Is Cover Cropping?As mentioned above, cover crops shelter soil we are not currently using. The benefits of this practice include inhibiting soil erosion and preventing weed growth when the ground is bare.
We sow fast-growing seeds as needed between spring and fall, depending upon when we plan to grow seasonal plants like flowers, fruits, herbs, and vegetables.
We mow flowering cover crops as needed to keep them from setting seeds and becoming garden weeds. And when we’re ready to use a plot or raised bed for crops, we till the green plants under the soil, where they enrich it.
Alternatively, no-till gardeners mow the cover to the ground and use the clippings as mulch. Their aim is to disturb the soil as little as possible.
The ground is ready for planting in two to three weeks after tilling and three to four weeks with no-till mowing.
The benefits of tilled-in or mowed mulch cover crops include:
Biodiverse, organically-rich soil structure Disruption of pest and disease cycles Erosion abatement Reduced soil compaction Improved drainage Replenishment of soil nutrients Weed suppressionSowing cover
Harry's Chelsea garden, The School Food Matters Garden
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