Cover Crop??

[rmonge00]

Hey everyone,

I am thinking about planting a cover crop this year and am wondering what peoples opnions about this are? I have never bothered before, but now that I have 10,000 sq feet of garden to deal with - I am thinking it may be a good option for weed prevention and soil fertility.... Just want to hear whether people think it is a good idea or not....

Also, any recommendations for what type of crop to plant - I am in western washington state, which is zone 8.

Thanks,

Ryan

 

[lesa]

I don't know anything specifically about your zone. But, I would encourage you to try cover crops. One year I planted winter wheat, and it worked out very well. This year I am trying red clover. It has already sprouted...I think the idea of "green manure" is very neat, and will certainly benefit your garden. Since you have so much space, why not divide it up and try a couple different things?

 

[digitS']

With that big of a garden Ryan, do you have enuf room to leave some of your garden out of production for a year at a time?

It is way too late for me here to plant something like winter rye and it would have been problematic for me to have done that in September. I did a September sowing once and had some trouble killing the tiny plants in the spring.

If I can sow winter rye about the 1st of August, the plants are HUGE by the 1st of May. It is really fairly easy to pull those big plants by hand at that time. Anyway, with mechanical means, sowing late in August should be fine if I wanted to use that ground the following spring.

What I could use it for is field peas . . . Those peas could even be harvested and out of the way for more winter rye that year. Or, they could be tilled under and something like sunflowers planted in June. The idea would be to work all that green manure into the ground before that would be a difficulty. Tilling in April, June and August, while sowing a cover crop immediately afterward each tilling would put a lot of organic matter into the soil.

. . . just what would work here, altho' I haven't quite done it that way .

Steve