The Incredible World of Cover Cropping

So - we are taking a sustainable farming class offered by our local agricultural extension office and a cool not-for-profit group called Rural Roots (www.ruralroots.org).  Anyone local to the Moscow area should check them out.  They offer and support a variety of farming classes and seminars.  This happens to be a six class series on starting a sustainable farm in Idaho.  It's pretty cool because it is simultaneously being offered at a bunch of locations across Idaho - so it is a mix of webinar and classroom modules.  And it does of course have homework.  

Anyhoo.....our second session was yesterday.  It was about cultivating crops.  I have to say - I learned SO MUCH about farming I can't hardly believe that I was so uninformed.  DH and I have spent the last few years in feverish pursuit of weed-free bare soil everywhere except where our food plants were.  In the process, we were KILLING our soil.  That's right folks, we are murderers.  As a by-product of our dead soil, we had increasingly smaller yields from our garden.  We kept blaming the weeds but really - it was us.  We did it.

I am a little disappointed in myself for not seeing this.  I am, after all, a trained biologist.  But I never really took the time to learn about growing vegetables naturally - because I thought I already knew how.  Boy was I wrong!  I mean, I knew that healthy soil was necessary for plant growth, but I really had no idea what 'healthy soil' actually was.

Probably the most important lesson I took away from our session yesterday is that sometimes you have to grow 'weeds' to improve your soil.  I know, right?!!  Terms like green manure, live composting, and cover crops - if I had heard them before, I certainly didn't understand them and how they can help me grow better, healthier, more productive plants.  I want to share this shiny  new, amazing, incredible, and mind blowing information with YOU.  But remember, I am a neophyte.  So this is just the introduction to these topics.  I am going to learn as much as I can in the months remaining before garden season - then I will try things and share with you my book learnin' and my hands on experiences.   I'm so excited!

Here is the 10 second sound byte:  cover crops are things that you plant for the main purpose of killing them.  Yep - that is right.  Their purpose in your garden is to die.  But before they do - they do all kinds of other great things.  They shade out weeds, keep the soil from eroding or blowing away in the wind, hold moisture, add nutrients to the soil, and.....they can even help decompact hard soil types.  Amazing right?  There are lots of complexities to the use of cover crops - what to plant, when to plant, how to kill, till in or leave on top........but because of that - the potential is unlimited for incorporating them into your garden.

Some of the common suspects for use as cover crops include cereals, ryegrass, sudan grass, hairy vetch, and winter peas.  There are many more.   They can be planted in summer after early crops are harvested or they can be planted in fall to over winter.  It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish with cover cropping.  You can even incorporate cover crops into your garden while it is growing - between rows and even between plants to help deter weed growth.  I can't wait to try this!

No more neat rows of plants with bare dirt in between - no sir!  Our garden is going to look more like this......messy is GOOD.  More later....