Cover Crops; your off-season best buds

We love, love growing food in Texas. We want you to love it and do it 365 days a year - something not all Americans in all climates can do. But not everyone wants to. If you don’t like digging in dirt during the cold, wet months of the Fall and Winter, or you’d rather be inside when it’s 100+ degrees, I totally get that. I didn’t either when I first started gardening, and honestly, many avid gardeners don’t, either. There’s a reason why the garden centers in town are PACKED February-May when spring gardening is in full swing.

The problem is, your garden and soil will do much, much better with something growing in it all year long. How do we get both? COVER CROPS! They are planted en masse and do not take a lot of attention.

What are cover crops?

Cover crops are any type of crop that you plant around unused garden space during an unused time of year - can be hot summer, or cool months. Cover crops can be certain flowers, grains, cereals, or also quite commonly, legumes such as beans and peas. A winter garden full of sugar snap peas, with their orchid-like blooms, giving you a fun snack each trip out your door is a wonderful thing! Buckwheat, black-eyed peas, sorghum, even large radish’s such as the Daikon radish are great, common cover crops.

Why are they so important?

Anything growing in the soil keeps the soil alive. And soil biology improves over time. Living soil is crucially important in organic gardening. As a matter of fact, using cover crops is a mini form of “crop rotation,” which is well known as a great technique to maintaining a rich, alive, light soil. Also, flowering cover crops feed pollinators. Many cover crops are “nitrogen-fixing” plants, that actually ADD nitrogen into the soil with their roots as they grow. Nitrogen is the most popular need of food plants; it’s the main ingredient in many fertilizers, and a common deficiency in most gardens. Nitrogen promotes stem and leaf growth. How great to have a plant naturally put that back into the soil for us!

How do I get this benefit?

If we are maintaining your garden for you, just ask us. We will plant a cover crop at the end of a growing season if you want a break. If you want to do it yourself, plant cover crops as you remove plants at the end of their season, normally as seed. Remember, for the most part, when it’s time to remove a plant, cut the plant at the base where the stem meets the soil rather than ripping it up roots and all. Common acceptations to this are if you want to eat the root (such as carrots, of course!) or if the plant is diseased. Leaving old, healthy roots in the soil adds minerals, nutrients, and aeration. This also goes for cover crops. When they are done, just cut them at the base. Most of them should just be left on the soil after cutting them down and you have an automatic, nutrient-rich, free mulch!

Need a great cover crop for your off-season? We’ll bring some to you as part of a regular maintenance plan if you wish!