Growing high quality food requires healthy living soils.
Cover crops are great allies improving soil quality. In this video I show some examples of cover cropping on our homestead.
Buckwheat, one of our favs!
Cover crops are any plants grown for the purpose of soil building & ground coverage.
There are many mechanisms involved, but one major benefit is increased organic matter in the soil.
The biomass of cover crops contributes to organic matter in the soil and helps improve water retention, nutrient exchange and increases diversity in the soil food web.
Ripper bean leaves
Most crops take from the soil (except nitrogen fixers) and cover cropping is a low tech inexpensive way to feed the soil. What seeds are planted depends on what the desired result is. You may have need for more nitrogen, weed suppression, soil aeration or to destroy harmful nematodes. There are different cover crops that can help with these issues.
Buckwheat
We like to sow buckwheat as it grows fast, provides forage for insects and helps liberate calcium in the soil. It also can smother certain weeds. The tender stalks grow, seed and then decompose quickly.
Ripper Beans
Ripper beans aka cowpeas are a great hot weather legume that thrives with little moisture.
They not only fix nitrogen through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria in the roots, but also provide a great deal of biomass.
Flower of the ripper bean.
Ripper bean pod.
Oats
We also sow oats as a multipurpose crop that provides us with medicine (milky oat tincture) and also helps suppress weeds and increases organic matter in the soil.
Alabask amidst the ripened oats.
We sow a mix of seeds (buckwheat and ripper beans seen here) and often include some edible greens such as kale, radish and purslane. Before or during flowering is a great time to cut down the crop as the plant is at its peak.
Before doing so, under sowing with another crop is a great way to get as much soil improvements in as possible allowing for many successions in a season.
The residues can be left as mulch or dug into the soil to hasten the decomposition process.
Fall is a great time to put unused garden space to bed (and help it regenerate) by sowing peas, cereal grasses, vetches, turnips, radishes and other seeds to improve soil quality simply and easily.
Tending the soil is one of the greatest things a human can do. Growing the best food is a result of years of careful soil building. In a century when the soils are being depleted on a massive scale, cover cropping is one of our best solutions and salves.
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Thanks for a very interesting post.
You are welcome 💚🌿
I've used cover crops when I didn't have mulch. Between you and @walkerland, I think I need to try buckwheat!
Yeah! It’s a favorite!
Appreciate the info! I was sort of aware of this... a friend of mine worked a lot in Central America with developing food sources in small spaces, mostly in Nicaragua. He was always talking about fast growing cover crops... I seem to remember buckwheat and alfalfa, but I guess it also depends on your climate and growing zones.
Definitely depends on those things and also what you’re trying to achieve. Glad you found the info helpful! I’m also a fan of alfalfa and clovers, which we didn’t mention in the article, but employ all over the homestead as perennial long term soil builders! They’re nice as they come bck each year and you can just keep “chop and dropping” them over and over to add biomass!
typo in first sentence I think "souls" = "soils" Interesting article on non-chemical solutions to common problems such as low nutrients, weeds and pests. Many large scale farmers use low-till or no-till now to improve soil. I remember when I was growing up, farmers would burn off wheat field stubble after harvest. I guess progress is being made :)
Thanks! Fixed it. Yes for sure progress is being made. We were talking with our local extension agent and she said there are a lot of grants and government incentives $$ to cover crop- it took 20 years, but better late than never! We all need to be in on the effort to improve the United State’s soil! 💚🌿
and in on the effort to improve the United State's soul! ;)
Knowledge is power. Knowing how to preserve the soil and growing good crops is important. It was an interesting read and thank you so much for sharing this knowledge
You are so welcome! Thanks for stopping by!
I really like this idea of cover cropping and I have never heard of it before, so thank you for sharing this great information plus I really like your crops
Buckwheat has to be my fav cover crop. Plus it's very nutritious, I like to add it to cereals.
We've got a cover crop - grass. Haha. No but seriously, our back acreage is a dust crop in summer unless we leave the tall grasses there, and it keeps the ground cool. People think we need sheep but we say BAAA! to that - no cloven footed beasties will trample our earth! And the mice love it, and the hawks like the mice. As for the vegetable patches, we do what you do too, putting beans and peas and cereal grasses to regenerate the soil and then we cut and chop it in. Great post and informative.
It really is important to plant these type of crops. It's funny to think that in the past farmers (before they were agribusiness) would allow fields to go fallow or to plant winter wheat crops to repair soil and always moved their plantings to different fields each year and also had a variety of animals to graze and leave their manure.
Now it's an odd streamlined business of cold steel and chemicals. It's so nice to see people returning to important old agricultural ideals.
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Our soil was so poor and full of rocks and sand I had little hope of growing anything successfully. Our first crop was peanuts and the took off like wildfire! Surprised me all to heck. But gradually over the last 7 years, we have managed to build the soil to where we can actually grow food! I am so pleased with the results, since homesteading in the tropics is so different than in the north.
awesome! incrdible that peanuts took off so well! it is SO different, it's interesting and cool to hear of your experience. glad to hear in only 7 years(!) that you have rehabilitated your soil so much. well done!! <3
Thanks, @mountainjewel. It took a lot of work but I am proud of what we able to accomplish.
Thanks this was interesting. It's always a good thing to never let the ground naked and growing cover-crop!