Tag Archives: soil health

Garden Advice

Cover Crops for Beginners

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We’ve mentioned cover crops in many articles on the blog before. These humble plants are an integral part of organic farming with many benefits for gardens, big and small. Today, we’ll take a deeper look into cover crops and how to use them for beginners.

Why Should I Grow Cover Crops?

There are many different types of cover crops which are all grown for specific reasons. Cover crops prevent erosion, decrease weed pressure, add organic matter to the soil, add nitrogen, and retain soil moisture. They also help provide food and habitat for beneficial insects and microorganisms. 

Choosing Cover Crops

As I mentioned above, there are many different cover crops. Generally, we can divide them into a few different categories by the primary purpose they serve in your crop planning.

Nitrogen Fixers

Nitrogen fixers are plants with a symbiotic relationship with bacteria known as Rhizobium. These bacteria colonize the nodules on the plants’ roots and allow the plant to take nitrogen from the air and use it. When these plants die or are cut back and added to the soil, they add nitrogen. Some nitrogen fixers include:

  • Red Clover
  • Crimson Clover
  • White Dutch Clover
  • Sunn Hemp
  • Hairy Vetch
  • Austrian Winter Peas
  • Iron and Clay Southern Peas
  • Alfalfa

All of the clovers are excellent for attracting bees to your garden. Perennial white dutch clover is a great choice for permanent garden pathways and can be mowed and used as mulch around plants. 

Austrian winter peas are a great winter option in zone 6 and up. Their shoots are edible and make excellent additions to winter salads. On the other hand, massive sunn hemp plants are day-length sensitive and do best as a summer cover crop. It thrives even during drought and is excellent for suppressing nematodes. 

Deep Rooted Cover Crops

Cover crops with large or deep roots are essential in areas with heavy clay or compacted soils. These large rooted crops help break up hard pans, add pockets for air and water, and add organic matter. A couple of our favorites are:

  • Deep-Till Radishes
  • Alfalfa

Deep-Till radishes produce large, fast-growing roots for aeration and breaking up compacted soils. They also have biofumigant properties, which are excellent for suppressing diseases and pests. They winter-kill in areas where temperatures reach below 20°F. 

Alfalfa is a nitrogen fixer with deep roots and is good at gathering water and nutrients from deep in the soil. It will add nitrogen and organic matter to the soil. Plus, it’s very cold-hardy, making it perfect for early spring or late fall plantings. 

Buckwheat (cover crops)Grasses & Mulchers

The main job of these cover crops is to produce a lot of organic matter. They form a ground cover that helps prevent soil erosion and gathers nutrients from the soil. They make excellent mulch in no-till systems and add nutrients and organic matter to the soil as they decompose. Some great options include:

  • Hulless Oats
  • Winter Rye
  • Wheat
  • Buckwheat

Rye is a good choice if you’re looking for a winter cover crop. It has an extensive root system for improving soil structure, suppressing weeds, and enhancing soil life. It’s also able to stabilize excess nitrogen from heavy manure applications. A combination of rye and vetch is a favored cover crop for no-till tomato planting. 

Buckwheat is the best choice when you want something fast, producing a green manure crop in 30 to 45 days! It’s great for out-competing weeds and providing mulch for fall crops when planted in midsummer. The little white flowers attract beneficial insects, including parasitic wasps. 

Growing Cover Crops

Cover crops can be grown year-round. It’s a good idea to plan to leave your soil bare as little as possible. Sow cover crops in beds as soon as others are finished, whether that’s the middle of summer or fall. You can also use cover crops to provide sections of your garden with a needed boost of nutrients or organic matter or to suppress pests and diseases.

Knowing when you want to plant will help you determine which cover crop is appropriate for your situation. Some cover crops like winter rye, hairy vetch, and Austrian winter peas make excellent winter cover crops when planted in the fall. Other crops like buckwheat or sunn hemp will perform much better for summer crops. 

Once you’ve decided on a variety, you should follow the seeding instructions. It’s essential to follow the recommended seeding rates. Seeding your crops too thinly won’t achieve the desired benefits. 

Terminating Cover Crops

This step may sound scary, but it just means you’re ending the cover crop’s cycle so that you can plant something else. This process is typically done by mowing, weed whacking, scything, or tilling. In a no-till system, you can often use the material as a mulch and transplant it right into it or rake some back for direct seeding.

Typically, you should terminate cover crops before they go to seed. However, sometimes you may decide to let a quick-growing crop like buckwheat go to seed and grow again. Remember that you may have to continue to weed it out for a while after this; cover crops are good at suppressing weeds because they’re a bit weedy in nature themselves!

Winter Kill 

Nature also lends a helping hand for certain fall-planted cover crops. Those crops that are sensitive to frost or cold temperatures will winter kill and begin decomposing into the soil on their own. Some no-till farmers will plant directly into this crop residue in the spring.

Growing cover crops is quite simple and has many benefits. This fall, try growing cover crops in your garden to add nutrients and organic matter, reduce erosion, and encourage beneficial insects and soil organisms. 

 

 

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

Improving Heavy Clay Soils

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Gardeners rarely begin their journey with a plot of perfect soil, but it’s something we all dream about. In the Southeast, many gardeners have to work with heavy clay soils. While clay soil is rich in minerals and many nutrients, it’s prone to compaction, doesn’t drain well in wet weather, and doesn’t hold water well during droughts. Growing certain root crops like large carrot varieties can be especially tough.

Clay soils are a great foundation to improve on. Here are a few organic methods to improve your heavy clay soil. 

Practice No-Till (or minimal-till) Agriculture

It may sound counterintuitive, but tilling can make clay soils worse. Tilling increases soil compaction and kills beneficial fungi and micro-organisms. 

Cover Crops

Cover crops add nutrients and organic matter to the soil. Great choices for improving clay soils include buckwheat, clover, and wheat. Clover has the benefit of being a nitrogen-fixing legume, meaning that through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria, it captures nitrogen from the air and adds it to the soil.

You may also want to mix in large or deep-rooted cover crops like daikon radishes, lava beans, and alfalfa. These crops help break up compacted soil and create channels for air and water as their roots decompose.

Chop & Drop

You can also use a method commonly used by permaculturalists called “chop and drop.” This method involves growing crops like comfrey, pigeon peas, moringa, sun hemp, and sorghum. These crops are chopped and dropped on the soil to decompose. Comfrey is a popular choice for this in perennial gardens and fruit tree guilds.

Broadfork

Broadforking your soil is a great way to loosen soil without disturbing the layers or structure. It helps mitigate compaction and preserve beneficial organisms and fungi in the soil. 

Create Permanent Beds

Even just walking on your garden soil can cause severe compaction. Creating permanent beds that you don’t till, step on, or use machinery will help make light, fluffy soil. 

Use Terraces or Swales

If your property has heavy clay soil and a slope, you’ll probably deal with water issues. Planting in rows or terraces that are perpendicular to the slope of the land will help slow down the water in your garden and reduce erosion issues. Swales built on contours take this further and are a great way to catch large amounts of rainwater, allowing your plants to access it slowly, even on significant slopes. 

Spread Compost

Finished compost is the quickest way to beef up the organic matter in your soil. Adding a couple of inches of compost to each bed adds nutrients, improves water retention and drainage, and lightens the soil.

Use Mulch

Mulch helps block weeds, hold moisture, and keep soil temperatures cool. It also adds a lot of organic matter to your soil as it decomposes. Any organic mulch can help improve your clay soils, including straw, leaves, grass clippings, woodchips, and hay. Keep in mind that hay tends to have a lot of weed seeds.

Grow Varieties Adapted to Heavy Clay Soils

Improving clay soils isn’t something that happens overnight, especially in large gardens. If you’re planting in a garden with heavy clay soils this year, try some varieties that are adapted to these conditions.

  • Chantey Red Core Carrots
    This blocky, broad-shouldered variety with a blunt tip is well-suited to growing in clay. It was introduced from France in the 1800s.
  • Danvers 126 Carrots
    These carrots taper to a blunt point and are especially suited to growing in clay soil. The strong tops aid harvesting.
  • Everona Large Green Tomatillo
    These plants produce large, tasty tomatillos and thrive even in heavy clay soil and drought.  Seed collected by Barbara Rosholdt from tomatillos planted by Mexican workers at the Everona sheep dairy near Unionville, VA. Introduced in 2008 by SESE.
  • McCormack’s Blue Dent
    This beautiful dent corn makes delicious light blue flour and is especially suited to the eastern U.S., clay soils, and drought-prone areas. Introduced in 1994 by SESE. Bred by Dr. Jeff McCormack from a cross between Hickory King and an unnamed heirloom blue dent.
  • Oxheart Carrots
    A good carrot choice for shallow or heavy clay soils that most carrots don’t like. Dating to 1884, this variety produces thick, sweet “oxheart”-shaped carrots, 5-6 in. long and 3-4 in. wide, weighing up to a pound!
  • Pike Muskmelon
    Bred specially for growing in unirrigated clay soil, this vigorous melon has outstanding flavor and good disease-resistant. Introduced in 1935, Aaron Pike of Pike & Young Seeds; seedstock supplied to SESE by Aaron Pike’s niece.
  • Tennessee Red Valencia Peanuts
    This pre-1930 produces rich, sweet peanuts with red skins. It’s easy to grow without hilling, even in clay soils.
  • Texas Gourdseed Corn
    Originally brought to south Texas by German farmers who migrated from Appalachia during the late 19th century, this variety withstands drought and does well in clay soil. In south Texas, this is considered to be the best choice for tortilla flour.
  • Turga Parsnip
    This Hungarian heirloom produces short, stout roots that are good for heavy clay soils.
  • Southern Peas (Cowpeas)
    These productive peas are well-adapted to poor soils and drought. We carry 16 varieties at SESE.