Tag Archives: cover crops

Garden Advice

6 Ways to Improve Soil Fertility

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As grocery, fertilizer, and other prices continue to rise, many backyard gardeners are digging deep to grow their own food. Whether you’ve been gardening for 20 years or planted your first plot this spring, maintaining or building healthy, fertile soil is probably a top concern. If you’re on a budget, purchasing fertilizer or other organic garden amendments can be a strain or even out of reach entirely. Thankfully, there are a few affordable or even free ways to improve soil fertility. 

Start composting. 

In a previous post, I referred to compost as black gold, and I wholeheartedly believe that good finished compost is one of the best garden amendments you can have. It adds fertility, improves soil structure, encourages beneficial fungi and bacteria, and more. Composting also helps keep unnecessary items out of landfills. 

Here are a few of the items you can compost and keep out of a landfill:

  • Vegetable Scraps
  • Stale or Moldy Bread, Crackers, Chips, etc.
  • Egg Shells
  • Grass Clippings
  • Coffee Grounds
  • Tea and Tea Bags
  • Leaves

If you want to learn more about composting from what bin or system to use, maintaining your compost, and what to put in it, visit our post, Black Gold: Making Compost.

Water with compost, comfrey, grass-clipping, or manure tea.

If your plants need a fast-acting boost, watering with a bit of one of these DIY liquid fertilizers may do the trick. It may sound a little gross and can be a bit smelly, but it’s easy to do and worth it!

All you need is compost, comfrey leaves, grass clippings, or manure, a five-gallon bucket or another similar container, water, and some material for filtering like an old pillowcase or cheesecloth. 

Get the details from our post, DIY Compost Tea.

Bag and use your grass clippings.

While I’m all for going no-mow whenever you can and using alternatives like wildflower plantings in place of lawns, I do understand that mowing some areas is nice or even necessary. Whether you’re mowing around your garden to keep the grass from creeping in, a play area for your kids, or just around your home, you can put those grass clippings to good use!

A mower with a bagger will allow you to collect and use grass clipping as mulch or ingredients in compost or liquid fertilizer. However, you may not want to bag your clippings all the time. Just like grass clipping add fertility to your garden, they help keep your yard fertile and grass looking nice as well.Cover Crops to Improve Soil Fertility

Grow cover crops. 

Cover crops aren’t a quick fix, nor are they free, but I think their benefits still outweigh their negatives. Cover crops add fertility and organic matter to the soil, help keep down weeds, provide habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects, and prevent erosion. They’re also more affordable than buying fertilizer over the long term. 

Different cover crop species come with different benefits, and you may want to do a bit of research before selecting one. 

Some cover crops like buckwheat are “winter-kill,” meaning they die back with frost. Some no-till gardeners use these as mulch for the following spring. Just rake the dead plant material back to seed or transplant your crops.

Clover and other cover crops in the legume family are nitrogen-fixers meaning that they take nitrogen from the air and add it to the soil as they grow. You can read more about how nitrogen fixation works in our post, What’s a Nitrogen Fixer?

If you have a hardpan or compacted soil, you may want to look into cover crops like Deep-Till radishes. These and other large rooted, tough cover crops will help break up compacted soil and hardpan, aerate the soil, add organic matter and allow water to soak in faster.

Here are a few great cover crop options:

While many cover crops are planted in a rotation, leaving beds free of crops for a year or in seasons when beds are not in use, there is another great option, especially for no-till gardeners. You can grow a crop like white clover in the paths between permanent beds. White clover will tolerate being walked on and mowed, providing a great path and source of mulch.

Look for people getting rid of “mulch hay” or straw.

Sometimes, you can find old or “mulch” hay or straw listed for cheap or free on sites like Facebook Marketplace. Often, these are bails that have gotten wet, moldy, or are just no longer fit for animal feed or bedding, but they’re perfect for the garden! 

Use old hay or straw to create lasagna gardens, mulch around plants, add to your compost, or create hugelkultur mounds.

Talk to the farmer you’re purchasing or getting the hay from and make sure it’s not from a field that has been treated with herbicides. Some folks also don’t like using hay because it contains weed seeds. Straw is the stalks from a wheat harvest and is generally free of seeds.Woodchips for Soil Fertility

Search for free wood chips.

Wood chips are another great source of organic matter and work well as a mulch, helping keep the soil cool and moist and blocking weeds. They’re slower to break down than other mulches like grass clippings, hay, or straw but will eventually turn into good quality soil. They’re also an excellent habitat for beneficial insects.

It’s often easy to find free wood chips in the summer when power companies are cutting trees and limbs away from power lines. Contact your local company or stop and ask workers you see. Sometimes, they may even be willing to dump a whole truckload at your home for free if they’re working nearby. Occasionally, local garden or hardware stores will source wood chips from electric companies, and you can go and fill coats or a truck for cheap or free. 

Avoid using the dyed black or red wood chips that come in bags from hardware or big box stores. These aren’t organic and are generally much more expensive.

Improving your garden starts with the soil. Using these methods and amendments, you can add fertility to your soil on any budget. They’re great for your garden, good for the environment, and generally pretty simple. How do you add fertility to your organic garden?

Garden Advice

8 Reasons to Grow Austrian Winter Peas

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We’ve mentioned fall cover crops a lot on this blog. They help protect your soil through the winter, preventing erosion and providing habitat for beneficial insects and fungi. They also add nutrients and organic matter, and suppress weeds. One of our favorite fall cover crops is Austrian winter peas. Here’s why you should consider adding them to your garden:

1. It’s not too late to plant Austrian winter peas!

At least in the upper south, the end of October is a bit late to be sowing most cover crops. Thankfully, these peas will tolerate temperatures down as low as 0°F for brief periods. We still recommend planting them 4 to 6 weeks before your first hard frost for best results. However, we’ve had luck planting later than that. You can also improve their cold tolerance by sowing them with winter rye which will help shelter the peas from wind and cold temperatures. 

2. The flowers are beautiful and edible.

It’s hard not to fall in love with those little bi-colored blossoms. Beyond adding beauty to your springtime garden, you can use them to add color to salads or be as natural decorations for baked goods. 

3. They’re nitrogen-fixers.

Not all cover crops have the same benefits. Austrian winter peas are what are commonly known as nitrogen fixers, meaning that they have a symbiotic relationship with specific bacteria. The bacteria colonize the plant’s roots and pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere. The bacteria use the nitrogen, and then it becomes available to the plant.

When you plant Austrian winter peas as a cover crop, that nitrogen is added to the soil for your next crop to use. Additionally, the peas provide habitat for the same type of bacteria that other legumes like snap peas and pole beans use. Helping these beneficial bacteria flourish in your soil will give you better results with these sorts of crops.

4. The shoots are great in salads and stir-fries. 

Austrian winter peas are primarily grown as a cover crop or green manure, but they’re also a tasty green. The young shoots can be snipped off and added to salads and stir-fries. They have a nice pea-like flavor and will continue to grow in much of the south through the winter.

5. Austrian winter peas make great mulch. 

When you’re ready to plant other crops in spring, you have a couple of options when cover cropping with winter peas. Often, people choose to till them in. However, you can also use them in a no-till garden. Simply scythe them down (or cut or pull them by hand for small beds) and plant directly into them. They make a excellent layer of mulch and will slowly decay and add organic matter to the soil.

6. Livestock loves Austrian winter peas too.

Humans aren’t the only ones that find Austrian winter pea shoots tasty. Livestock loves them. During the winter, you can cut some as a treat for goats, chickens, or other backyard livestock.

7. You can eat them like snap peas.

If you decide to let your Austrian winter peas continue growing in spring, you can eat the young pods as snap peas or use them like shell peas as they mature. Generally, they aren’t quite as sweet as other varieties. 

8. The flowers are helpful for pollinators. 

When you fall plant Austrian winter peas, they get ahead start on many of your spring garden crops. This means they flower early, providing bees and other pollinators with food at a critical time.

We grow and offer many different cover crops at SESE, but Austrian winter peas have earned a place as a fall favorite. They’re a great dual-purpose crop for small farmers and gardeners looking to improve their soil health and grow fresh food during the winter.

Garden Advice

Great Beans & Peas: Using Legume Inoculant

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If you’ve been gardening for a while, you’ve probably heard that beans, peas, and other legumes are nitrogen-fixing, meaning that they add nitrogen to the soil as they grow. However, many gardeners are less aware of exactly how this process works.

This process is a symbiotic relationship between legumes and specific types of bacteria called Rhizobacteria. These bacteria cause legumes to grow nodules on their roots. The bacteria live on the nodules and get carbohydrates from the plants. In return, the bacteria take nitrogen from the air and convert it to a form that is accessible to the plants.

Why do I need to inoculate? Doesn’t this bacteria occur naturally?

Rhizobacteria do occur naturally in some soil. However, there may be little to none present, particularly if you haven’t grown legumes in that area for several years. Legumes perform better with more bacteria present.

If you’ve ever had legumes fail to thrive, a lack of rhizobacteria may be part of the problem. Adding inoculant will ensure that there’s enough present to perform nitrogen fixation.

Using legume inoculant can:

  • Improve vigor and health of legume plants.
  • Improve yields.
  • Increase nitrogen available for other plants.
Guard-N Inoculant

How do I inoculate my legumes?

Inoculating legume seeds is very simple. All you need to do is moisten your seeds and dust them with a bit of inoculant. You should plant them within 24 hours of inoculating.

We provide full instructions as well as more information on the Guard-N Inoculant we carry here.

The inoculant mix we carry at SESE contains Bradyrhizobium sp. (Vigna), Rhizobium leguminosarum biovar viceae, Rhizobium leguminosarum biovar phaseoli, and Bradyrhizobium japonicum. It can be used with:

  • Garden peas, including shelling, snap, and snow peas
  • Sweet peas
  • Lima beans
  • Soybeans
  • Fava beans
  • Southern peas
  • Asparagus beans
  • Common beans such as snap beans
  • Peanuts
  • Sunn hemp
  • Vetch (Vicia sp.) including Hairy Vetch, but not Crown Vetch.

Late Spring Sale

We’re currently having a late spring sale. Our Guard-N Inoculant is 20% off! Order yours today to ensure that your beans, peas, peanuts, and other legumes thrive this season.