Late-fall cover-crop observations
I've been noticing little snippets of cover-crop observations lately, none of which is quite enough to make its own post. But maybe you won't mind a hodge podge.
The photo above shows how the yellow jackets are swarming around unopened fava-bean buds. I assume they're stealing nectar somehow, a bit like the ants I noticed on okra flowers a few years ago. Presumably unrelated to the yellow jackets, our fava beans have been blooming for weeks, but keep dropping the ovaries without setting fruit, so they might not be a good edible in our location after all.
Then there's the observation two of you made in comments,
that the puny fava beans between my sunflowers are due to
allelopathy. I hadn't realized that sunflowers were allelopathic,
but the internet suggests that is indeed the case, and that water
dripping off sunflower leaves can carry chemicals that make surrounding
plants do poorly. I guess sunflowers aren't the best candidate for
multi-species cover-cropping campaigns!
My last observation is four-footed. Goats love oat leaves
so much that I've been earmarking a large proportion of that cover crop
for goat treats. I can't help it! I know the soil loves oat
biomass too, but when Artemesia blats at me, I give in and provide any
treat I can think of. In case you're curious, my ability to spoil
animals is nearly unparalleled....
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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