Cover crop???

[sunnychooks]

Can someone explain what a cover crop is? I'm trying to read everything I can about starting a veggie garden and this term keeps cropping lol up!
I'm assuming it's a crop that planted in the fall that is harvested or discarded in the spring. If alfalfa or oats are planted can they be harvested for livestock? What is it's purpose? Does having a cover crop hinder early spring planting? Or am I misunderstanding the whole thing?

 

[patandchickens]

The usage I've mostly seen refers to anything you plant on ground that would otherwise be bare, basically to protect the soil from the bad things that'd otherwise tend to happen to it if left stark nekkid (erosion, leaching of nutrients, compaction, and so forth). If you're planting it with the main intent of getting a significant crop from it I am not sure you'd usually call it a *cover* crop, but I guess there is no law stopping anyone from saying that And there is no reason a cover crop can't serve some mild use beyond just clothing the ground.

A similar term is 'green manure', used more specifically when you're intending on turning the cover crop into the soil and letting it rot down a bit (adding organic matter to the soil, as well as a bit of nitrogen if it was a legume) before planting anything else.

Does that help?


Pat

 

[Rosalind]

Basically, you've got the right idea.

You want to use something more like winter rye or hard red wheat or field peas, or a mix of all three. If you wanted to harvest a crop edible by animals, you could go with clover, field peas, oats, turnips, Russian mustard greens. I don't think I'd use alfalfa, because to get a good alfalfa hay crop takes a lot of work (seeding twice, takes a long time to grow, young-ish plants don't tolerate frost well, has to be cut just so), whereas the other stuff you can grow any old how and it'll do fine. I would put at least one legume (field peas, clover, vetch) in there--they fix nitrogen and you won't have to add nearly as much fertilizer in the spring.

Cover crops are meant to be discarded when you're ready to plant in the spring--either tilled under or cut for fodder and then the remaining bits tilled under. So no, it shouldn't delay spring planting, unless you don't find time to do the extra work of cutting, drying and tilling. The only reason spring planting would be delayed is if you were intent on getting a fodder crop from it, and you wanted to wait until later in the spring to get a higher-quality hay. Most hay crops (clover, alfalfa, etc.) are best cut when the tops are just budding and not yet flowering--which won't happen until late spring/early summer. If you've got started plants in pots ready to go in the ex-hayfield, that's fine, but if you wanted to seed direct, then the hay crop will delay anything else in that field so long that you may only be able to plant short-season stuff there.

 

[sunnychooks]

Thanks! That does clear up some questions. You both mentioned tilling the cover crop under before spring planting. How do you do that without having the crop take root and start growing again? Or is that not a problem?

 

[digitS']

Thanks! That does clear up some questions. You both mentioned tilling the cover crop under before spring planting. How do you do that without having the crop take root and start growing again? Or is that not a problem?

It can be a problem, Sunnychooks, but the only time I've had much trouble with winter rye was when it was seeded late and so the plants were small when the garden was tilled in the spring. With quite porous and soft soil, taller plants have been easy for me to pull by hand. When they were short, I could neither grip them well enuf to pull them out of the ground nor effectively kill them with a single pass of the rototiller.

To have really tall winter rye, I have sown the seed during the last few days of July. The plants were waist-high by the first of May. I could either compost them or dig the soil out of a bed to a depth of at least 8 inches and bury the plants.

Brassicas (radishes, turnips, mustard greens, etc.) can be grown over the winter as cover crops. They may survive the cold weather but I've found them very easy to kill in the spring.

In most areas, oats can be used as a cover in late summer and fall. I've grown oats for hay and grain crops but never used them like this, however. Oats cannot survive the winter so this crop will already be dead when it comes time to cultivate the ground in the spring. This has also been true in my area when I've planted field peas in the fall. They couldn't survive the winter but it probably took below zero temperatures to kill the plants.

Steve