The Ins & Outs of Fall Cover Crops to Reinvigorate Your Garden Soil for Next Spring

One of the techniques many gardeners use to naturally reinvigorate their soil year after year is to plant fall cover crops when they’ve finished harvesting their summer vegetables. Most annual crop plants are heavy feeders, depleting the soil of its nutrients, and when we clean those fruits and vegetables away, many of those nutrients are taken out of the soil cycle.

In natural systems, annual plants grow, die, and decompose in place, and perennial plants shed leaves each year to replenish the soil. However, most gardens don’t operate this way. We harvest crops and plants, so they never get a chance to decompose and feed the soil.

To replicate the same natural effect, we can plant cover crops that are grown simply to keep the garden soil vibrant and full of life. These “crops” are cultivated simply to be cut in place and left to decompose in the garden.

Only now, because we are choosing the plants we want to feed our soil, we can gear our cover crops to get as much as possible out of them.

How Cover Crops Work

Cover crops are planted near the end of the growing season after viable harvests have been gotten. The seeds are sown thickly so that they occupy the entire garden space, allowing no room for weeds. They grow as much as possible before the winter cold makes everything dormant or dead.

Then, in late winter or early spring, the crops are cut so that the roots can decompose beneath the soil and the debris can act like rich, organic natural mulch. As all of the organic matter breaks down, it feeds the organisms in the soil, and that creates fertility, replenishing macro- and micro-nutrients.

Source: MIgardener/YouTube

What Makes a Good Cover Crop

Specific cover crops can be chosen for many reasons, but the general idea is that they have a valuable root structure, plenty of biomass, cold hardiness, and/or fast growth tendencies.

• Nitrogen-fixing legumes are a common choice, with white clover, red clover, hairy vetch, and field peas being easy finds.
• Annual and winter rye are common grasses used for cover cropping. They are very cold-hardy, produce a lot of biomass, and have deep root systems.
• Grains like barley and oats (also grasses) are also possible choices because they have special abilities. Oats are very tolerant of wet conditions, and barley tolerates dry, salty soils.

Many growers like to do a combination of these plants or similar ones. Daikon radishes are another common find in cover crop mixes because they are great for loosening compacted soil.

Why Cover Crops Are Awesome

Cover crops earn their keep by adding fertility to the soil, but the benefits don’t stop there. By keeping the soil planted and covered, they keep weeds at bay, and they provide a safe habitat for the soil microbes when the weather gets cold and/or snowy. Cover crops also prevent soil from eroding via wind or rain, and they protect the soil tilth by preventing compaction. Finally, in the spring, the crop residue provides an awesome layer of mulch in no-till gardens.

Source: Epic Gardening/YouTube

When & How to Plant Cover Crops

Technically, cover crops can be planted anytime the garden bed doesn’t have a food crop growing in it. Most of the time, when gardeners talk about cover crops, they are referring to winter cover crops. These are planted in late summer or early autumn when there is still time for them to grow before winter. Usually, they are sown after food crop plants have been removed, but they can be sown around those plants if harvests are still coming in.

Cover crops are also chosen because they are easy plants to grow. They don’t require any tilling or special care. Rather, the seed is spread thickly (two or three times the normal recommended amount) over the garden space, gently raked into the soil, and left to do its thing. The general idea is that the cover crop doesn’t mature because we don’t want it to become woody or produce seeds.

Cover That Garden

Because our gardens give us so much food each year, we must return the favor. That’s the give and take of sustainable farming. The whole thing is about keeping the soil fertile, and that boils down to keeping the soil life well-fed and happy. Cover crops are a tried-and-true method for doing just that.

Related Content:

• How To Rejuvenate Tomato Plants For a Late Summer Harvest
• 7 Reasons You Should Plant a Mulberry Tree
• How to Keep Plants Cool in the Heat of Summer
• 7 Things to Do with Your Overabundance of Homegrown Cucumbers and Summer Squash
• What You Should Plant This Summer for an Autumn Harvest

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