The ideal planting date for a winter cover crop is about early October in our climate or zone 7A. If you follow Christine Jones' webinars and articles, she explains that what's important in a mix isn't the number of species, it's the number of plant families. Why ? Coz different families work really differently at getting nutrient from the soils, and exchange the excess with neighbouring plants, either through mycorrhizae, or just by sharing specific bacteria they work with. Her advice is to use at least 4 different families. So it's useless to use 4 or 5 different types of legumes, you only need one. Then add a cereal like rye, a brassica like daikon or canola, and the all important phacelia, because it's kind of alone in its family of plants. You can also add an aster like chicory. There's a lot more choice for summer cover crops though, coz you got buckwheat, sorghum, sunflowers, flax, etc... Winter is a bit more tricky.
Interesting video. I use cereal rye for over the winter because I need a lot of mass in the spring. I grow it until it is chest high. You mentioned that you need to kill it off. Does that mean it would regrow if you mowed it and then immediately tilled it in? That could be a problem for me. I don't want to purchase all that plastic to kill it and would never use a herbicide. Having radishes in the spring would be nice, though.
The ideal planting date for a winter cover crop is about early October in our climate or zone 7A. If you follow Christine Jones' webinars and articles, she explains that what's important in a mix isn't the number of species, it's the number of plant families. Why ? Coz different families work really differently at getting nutrient from the soils, and exchange the excess with neighbouring plants, either through mycorrhizae, or just by sharing specific bacteria they work with. Her advice is to use at least 4 different families. So it's useless to use 4 or 5 different types of legumes, you only need one. Then add a cereal like rye, a brassica like daikon or canola, and the all important phacelia, because it's kind of alone in its family of plants. You can also add an aster like chicory. There's a lot more choice for summer cover crops though, coz you got buckwheat, sorghum, sunflowers, flax, etc... Winter is a bit more tricky.
So much goes into having healthy soil to grow incredible tasting food!
I like the radish addition to that mix!
it's the most important one if you got clay soil.
Interesting video.
I use cereal rye for over the winter because I need a lot of mass in the spring. I grow it until it is chest high.
You mentioned that you need to kill it off. Does that mean it would regrow if you mowed it and then immediately tilled it in? That could be a problem for me. I don't want to purchase all that plastic to kill it and would never use a herbicide. Having radishes in the spring would be nice, though.
Yea we will flail mow it or just mow it/weed wack it and then tarp. It would likely come back without tarping