Cover Crops are an inexpensive way to improve soil health

Adding commerically produced compost, manures, and other garden amendments to improve your soil can be quite costly.  And for organic gardeners, caring for the soil and enriching both the nutrient content and the texture, or tilth, are essential for producing abundant crops with fewer disease and pest problems.  So how can the frugal gardener improve soil fertility without shelling out the bucks for bagged amendments?  One way is to make and use your own compost, which I’ll post more on later.  But another really cheap way to improve your soil is through cover cropping.  Cover crops are seed crops grown over garden beds when they’re not being used to grow vegetables or flowers.  There are great cover crops for either cool or warm growing seasons.  Winter cover crops like fava beans, vetch, field peas, and annual grains protect the soil from degrading winter winds and rain, aerate the soil with root penetration, and add nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil when tilled in.  Summer cover crops like Buckwheat can accomplish the same goals, in addition to providing flowers for pollinators and beauty.   For more of an overview of cover crops, see the ATTRA  (National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service) web site.

winter crops of garlic and kale on the left and field peas, vetch and favas on the right as cover crops

Cover crop seed is cheap!  Usually $1-5 per pound.  For a great list of cover crops and their uses and benefits, check out the University of California’s Cover Crop Resource Page.  Cover crop seed is readily available here in Portland at retail nurseries like Garden Fever or Portland Nursery.  Good online sources for seed are Peaceful Valley Farm Supply and Nichols Garden Nursery.

Okay, so you grew a cover crop, now what????  There are several different options for adding the plants to your soil.  One way is to wait until the soil has dried out enough to work in the Spring and then turn the crop under the soil 6-8 weeks before you intend to plant.  In the case of some crops, for instance if your fava beans have gotten tall, you’ll have to chop up the stems to help the plants break down in the soil more quickly.  You could also double dig you beds and add the plant material to the bottom of the trough.  Another method is to cut down the crop and leave it laying on top of the soil and then plant right through it.  It will act as a sheet mulch and eventually add nutrients to the soil.