FALL COVER CROPS WISH I KNEW This 10 Years Ago. I would like to share this UPDATED info about Fall Cover Cropping and How Roots grow soil.
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Understanding Ag, Menoken Farms, Bionutrient Food Association, Living Web Farms, Advancing Eco Agriculture, Back to the Roots… all good yt channels for more info on soil, cover crops, etc.
Not necessarily as cool as Mark, but good sources on lots of topics.
Thanks Mark.
6-7 months with no outside gardening?!?!?!
YIKES
We need to move you to GA……-KJ
Great information same as always. Thank you very much.
What zone are you in?
So iam in S Tx my struggle is to grow in our garage summer I usually go with sweet potato as ground cover would u suggest something else?
Fun, you admitting not to make compost. Along with Maritime Gardening channel you are a white raven. Seems a virus on all market farming and gardening channels nowadays, you need (to) compost. A couple of months ago I realized that kitchen scraps and garden waste reduced to a volume of 20 percent of the original input and the upper layer of the soil is the most active, so i decided to reduce the input to my slow compost heap (only one turn during a year) to a minimum and use a lot for mulching right away. Why wait a year, bring it to the compost heap, turn it and sift it before reusing it as a mulch. I know, for many ppl mulching is not esthetic, it's chaotic and not in line with their OCD or their front yard suburban mentality. Sorry for the rant, now I will continue with freeing seeds from my winter rye harvest in order to reseed them. Anecdotal: 20 yrs ago I invented a rabbit tractor for the backyard lawn. The male rabbit not only peeed yellow circles on the lawn, but he also had great escape variations, jumping out, tunneling, and chewing up chicken wire, more over he did like to eat the rosebuds of the neighbours and tried to fertilize the other neighbours cats. She was a state attorney and felt offended. Gardening is Fun.
Great video Mark. Can you help with a list of cover crops to use as companion crops and living mulch during the growing season? I used your strawberry and clover companion system with great success. Thinking of using sunflowers with and amongst vining crops next year.
We use Mexican sunflower (Tithonia), cow peas, alfalfa and comfrey (thanks to your prior suggestion) as our cover crops and we chop and drop for biomass, and green manure here in Arizona. Great information and thank you for sharing.
I love the feel of winter rye… Looks good too!
I'm still trying to understand. You grow a cover crop, it makes soil better over winter or even all year. You chop and drop and that becomes compost/mulch. That protects soil from drying out and feeds the beneficial s and micro rizal fungi. So everywhere you chop and drop becomes garden territory. Doesn't it take a year or so before what you chopped becomes broken down enough to plant seeds or starts? So say you don't have to wait long, doesn't the living roots compete with your crop? If that doesn't matter then why do we even bother to weed the garden? I'm coming from Back to Eden style garden. Arborist woodchips 8 inches thick, covered over Florida grass lawn (no till). I wonder now if I was mistaken to pull weeds out. I started at beginning of epidemic, my woodchips decomposing nearly 2 years. I really like the idea of what roots could do. I wonder if clover would grow on top of the chips. Your advice would be appreciated.
great info as always Mark. thank you. I did not know that a legume would not produce a nodule if the soil already had enough N.
Greetings from northern/coastal Massachusetts zone 6A. I've been watching your videos since the beginning, and have not commented before this <sorry>.. I'll just say that your demonstrations are second to none, and as a microbiologist/virologist – I absolutely love when you bust out your microscope! Winter rye is my go-to cover crop here. I wish you the very best and look forward to your future content. Cheers and blessings to you and your family! Eric
If you remember or can find the variety of multiblooming sunflower, please post.
My growers' group will have a new, large piece of garden area to prep. We could use the blooms to sell as a fundraiser while rehabbing the soil.
Are they low pollen or pollenless?
Looks like the tap root broke off from your sunflower. It likely went down much further. I like the idea of winter rye because it's an annual, the others are a little more like weeds, right?
I thought tomatoes plants had to be removed because of disease? BTW we had some early blight this year.
Thanks for reminding me! I'm going to be going to the store at lunch today and picking up some winter cover crop seeds! First time ever… And I'll be sure NOT to remove the roots of the summer's harvest. 🙂
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience Mark. This is the most informative and insightful soil building video i have ever seen. “Living root over winter”, damn, I too wish I had known about this 10 years ago (in Zone 5a)!
I'm going on my 3rd year with no till and cover crops and I was wondering if you've tried any of these new soil or seed treatments that help with the biology in your soil or just being patient and letting the covers work their majic
So I'm in a warmer climate, zone 9B and have been growing year round. In fall/winter I grow beets, radish, turnips carrots, mustard greens, lettuce, fava beans, peas, bok choy etc. Could I benifit from a cover crop, maybe alongside my cool weather crops. What would be the best way to go about this? Or are my cool whether crops essentially a cover crop?
See, how these cowards are murderers, robberers, thiefs, rapists, warcriminels, torturers, psychiatrists and terrorists damaging and poisoning environment before and after "gardening".
Nature hates them, for nature feels their rotten evil and sadistic insanity of psyches.
Have you tried Austrian Winter Pea? I've been sowing cover crops all month, first frost was supposed to be oct 5, maybe nov 5 this month.
One of the best explanations about the benefits of cover cropping I've heard.
Thanks.
How do you terminate your cover crops for planting
Does growing clover along with your crops rob nutrients from your plants like weeds do? I let them proliferate this year using it as a green mulch to keep the soil shaded. Now should I cut it down, cover with compost and leaf mulch before winter?
I am in the zone 7b and I like your vids very much! In this one you do it the Masanobu Fukuoka way:
From wikipedia:
The four principles of natural farming are that:[21]
• human cultivation of soil, plowing or tilling are unnecessary, as is the use of powered machines
• prepared fertilizers are unnecessary, as is the process of preparing compost
• weeding, either by cultivation or by herbicides, is unnecessary; instead, only minimal weed suppression with minimal disturbance should be used
• applications of pesticides or herbicides are unnecessary
Winter rye works wonderful in 7b, I also use a variety of a broad bean, called Arabella, in spring I do seed a big variety of cover crops, diversity in cover crops is very important, according to research results of the university of natural resources Vienna, "Mustard alone belongs to a sausage not to the soil!". I think the way you are gardening is very philosophical, respecting many connections and much more than Liebig's law of minimum…
Question…so in spring when you go to plant your garden how do you get rid of all that clover and rye? Do you till?
How would one go about that in a no till garden? Was just going to cover my garden with billboard tarp after putting cow manure on.
This was my 1st full year of backyard gardening. I am in the eastern panhandle of WV. I want to stay organic as much as possible but have hard clay & a million rocks to dig in so I am using raised beds & wicking tubs but would like to try fixing my soil. I grow mostly to support my local food bank. also have moles, rats, gophers & rabbits that I want to trap & put in a pen!!! I am composting & want worms too. I started too late last year to grow much. It was was disappointing but this past Spring, I was ready with seedlings that I grew myself. I am learning @ 75 years old! I had beautiful crops of tomatoes, peppers & many other things too. Some disappointments but lots of successes. I am learning lots & just planted my 1st cover crop (black eyed peas & Crimson Clover that I inoculated) in a small area that I had tried to grow green & wax beans in without much success. This area had been a flower bed that was well-mulched for years & so was a little easier to deal with. Love your information & help. Thanks so much!