Spring cover crops
Last year, I remember
thinking that it was wasteful to have half of the garden fallow until
May, with some beds being held open all the way until June.
Sounds like a spot for spring cover crops!
The goal for fall
cover crops is usually weed suppression and soil building, but
spring cover crops are often used to boost soil nitrogen so you don't
need to add so much compost to the soil. I've narrowed down our
spring cover crop choices to one familiar candidate and one newbie:
- Oats don't add nitrogen
to the soil, but they can be planted much earlier than other spring
cover crops. Although soil temperature is variable from year to
year, I suspect we'll achieve their recommended planting temperature of
38 degrees Fahrenheit in February or early March. That will give
the oats their full six to ten week growing season before I mow them
down in mid to late April, and the leaves can decompose a bit and then
provide mulch through the summer.
- Field peas are a good
source of nitrogen and their flowers are an early source of nectar for
honeybees too. Field pea residue breaks down quickly in the soil,
so it's best to plant the legumes where I'm going to be direct-seeding
summer crops and need bare soil. I suspect we can plant field
peas in early March (minimum soil temperature 41 degrees Fahrenheit)
and give them a couple of months to grow before mowing them down in
time to plant our summer crops.
Since I have about 35 pounds
of oat seed leftover from the fall and only an expensive 1 pound of
field pea seeds on their way from Johnny's Select Seeds, I suspect I'll
plant mostly oats for my spring cover crop. I do want to try at
least one bed of oats and field peas together, though, since the two
make a good duo --- the oats give the peas something to grow up, and
when the cover crops are mowed down the high nitrogen peas give the
mixture a C:N ratio that promotes more rapid decomposition.
At the moment, though,
our soil temperature is hovering right around freezing (a little warmer
in the sunny mule garden and a little colder in the shadiest end of the
front garden), so I've got to wait a while before planting.
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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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http://rivermud.blogspot.com/2011/04/garden-cover-crop-field-trial-results.html
Plant the peas in the late fall and get pretty impressive coverage - I'm about to mow them for our last frost date and they are 2' tall. Haven't bloomed yet.
I also have a garden with early spring planted peas and it's not even in the same ballpark. Plants are maybe 5" tall. At most.
Yes, I've tried Austrian Field peas (most successful), cow peas (OK), NZ clover (bad), mammoth red clover (OK), crimson clover (bad), and berseem white clover (bad).
Mixing in oats with the field peas this fall....mice instantly got into the rows and tried to eat all the oats. Oh well.