I remember the local farmers in southern New Hampshire generally planted "winter rye" in the late fall every year, and often did crop rotation as well. We were taught these things in school in those days. (For the benefit of those of us who lacked some of the upscale amenities like indoor plumbing, we were also taught that the outhouse should always be down the hill from the well )
I can't recommend rye highly enough for this. It lets other plants grow around it, but it's capable of growing through wood chips, if you mulch with them, and degrades them insanely fast over the winter. Also, if you keep animals, rye really seems to like gentle grazing and seed foragers. It feeds my chickens very well, and squirrels also eat the seeds
Same experience here on Vancouver Island BC. Rye has worked well in a test I did. Side note: Rye seed really attracts rats and never seems to stale in that regard. So I keep some for my traps, works better than peanut butter.
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!
I am so very happy for you and your garden. Green beans and peas will help your soil very much aa a food crop due to a great root system. If you can get your hands on use coffee and mix in your soil very helpful also. THANK YOU for sharing this with me, your a amazing gardener.
@@sararampton654 thanks Sara, I am trying to make a difference in my little neighborhood. I started a gardening & composting group on my local Nextdoor group & lots of people bring me their leaves & stuff that would normally be left out @ the curb. If you don’t know about Nextdoor check it out! I try to educate people about growing their own food naturally!
I'm really lucky, because I have a native vetch that handles nitrogen mineralization very well if I just leave it alone. We also get very good cover of rye growing every year. My yard takes care of winter cover for me, and when I kill it in the spring and plant in it, everything does well. Also, oats have taken to being a consistent winter grass from when I fed chickens there. We had a cool, wet spring two years ago that killed it, but we had millet coming up for four years, but that grows in the summer, so it's not in the garden.
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.
How do you keep the Mexican sunflower from growing where you drop it? Turkscap hibiscus too is good but i had to kick it around a couple times cause is kept growing back. I'm thinking now, probably cause we get so much rain in Florida.
Do you put them in the ground starting fall time? I live in So Cal and I wanted to do a mix of cover crops, but I got confused towards the end when he said that the roots will not go as deep 😢
@charleskelm3703 Is your Comfrey the cultivar, Russian Bocking 14, that doesn't produce viable seeds? If not, that could be why you're fighting a losing battle with it. In this case, you want to prune every sign of flowering before it releases seed. Nip it in the bud. To keep RussianBocking14 in check, each spring, you can slice straight down into the soil about 18 inches out around the Comfrey plants you want to keep. RB 14, reproduces by sending out runners, so cutting them off near the end of spring, will help to keep it in check. Otherwise, my sheepish side wants to encourage you to start a Comfrey Root propagation business.😂
My father (old Nebraska farmer) always pointed out that rye as a cover crop is so beneficial because it has such a dense fibrous root mass. So much so that for every ton of green matter on the surface, there is 3 tons of fine brown matter below. This can break up hard pan, pull up nutrients from down deep. Most importantly the amount of earth worms skyrockets mixing the soil. We would spot seed rye into the weakest soils in huge corn fields. Over many years these weak patches start to match the better soils around them. Most other cover crops will only have 1-1.5 tons below the surface for each green ton above.
Hi, dear organic gardener! Thank you for sharing this information with us, and , please, tell me, where can I buy winter rye seeds and others for cover crops. Thank you so much!
It is a little late but us here in southern Wisconsin, Zone 5a, just planted our first crop of annual rye today. We hope that it will still be able to germinate and loosen/build the soil. This is our first year of starting a garden so we cannot wait for next to see what it has in store. Our neighbors think we are nuts with collecting as many leaves as we have. Thank you so much for so much valuable information you have provided through these episodes.
Our neighbors too... They're so nosy. We have neighbors on two sides of the house and thank God no neighbors in the back side except it's a wooded land and deer are mainly our neighbors from that side. But one of the neighbors is a retired elderly and she never leaves the house. So far she's made comments like "You have so many containers... What you're growing will be eaten up by deer" ... So I am thinking of setting up a wooden fence. Pretty sure she will make a comment and I will tell her it's for the deer but actually I want to block her view, she doesn't know we've already solved the deer issue haha... We also collect leaves, matter of fact today we just made a leaf mold. When we were creating our first pile of compost 6 weeks ago we could see neighbors looking .. So now I have my compost in containers.. but they can't get hot (maybe because of the cold weather, but it's frustrating)... I definitely need to build a fence, or a wall! LOL
I am in the Madison area and I collect multiple trailer loads of leaves in the fall and the following year always manage to run out. As a new gardener, I would highly encourage you to put some energy in creating leaf mold. Leaf mold has so many applications plus being a fungal decomposition you really can't screw it up, like traditional hot composting. Another resource I would recommend is Gardener Scott, he has many pertinent videos for new and experienced gardeners alike. Good luck in your first year garden!!!
@@cheesekake1841 Compost needs mass, the small containers will not allow enough heat to be generated. Your neighbor is trying to tell you the small containers do not work and are ugly.
I have planted living fences to block the view from the neighbors' houses. I'm hoping that the combination of Jerusalem artichokes and flowering vines will give them something to focus on and the deer something to browse upon! I too have lots of bags of leaves this time of year.
I believe you could still plant a mix with only 2 months to grow before freezing as I have read that is the purpose of radish. It grows and gets killed in the fall and then rots and leaves a hole for water and air to enter your soil... It might be smaller than you want but it would still be beneficial... Same thing with planting sunflowers even though they might not have time to bloom, they could still help. I would plant them in a mix that contains winter rye which can take over when the frost sensitives die.
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)!
Thank for sharing this awesome and informative video with me...loved, loved, loved it... watched it a few times to get a good understanding of cover cropping... I just terminated buckwheat which I left on the soil but I don't know where to go from there....next time I will go with the winter rye because of its massive root system. Will I have to cover the buckwheat with landscape fabric till next planting season?
I read that during the depression in the 30’s, the farmers had removed all the ground roots from under their crops because they were told to grow more and more. Nothing would grow anymore and that was the cause of all the dust everywhere. One time this dust went in a huge cloud from the middle of the country (Dust Bowl?) all the way to New York.
Greetings from northern/coastal Massachusetts zone 6A. I've been watching your videos since the beginning, and have not commented before this .. 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
THANK YOU so very much for your kind words. I love how nature works and as a low income farmer it helps me so much to have nature help me to produce vegs. Have a great year ahead.
I grow greens in my raised beds and have planted winter rye or med red clover between the rows. I keep the cover crops cut down to keep them from shading the greens until they get large enough to not be shaded. I try to keep roots in the ground at all times.❤
I am in zone 7 and I use a mixed cover cropthat I order from Amazon. It is from Trueleaf market and has 10 types of cover crops. I ordered 5 lbs for $19 with free shipping. I used it in me raised beds last year and found so many worms in the spring when I cut it down an left it as mulch.
I just ordered this. Going to try it in about 500 sq feet of raised beds. Zone 6b Northeastern Pennsylvania Aug 26th 2022 I've used winter rye with hairy vetch in the past and it's been amazing how it transforms soil. Specifically we transformed a lawn area. Did a great job. We let it grow about 6 feet which was really cool. I'm sure the neighbors thought we were absolutely nuts. But what are they growing? Fescue?
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. :)
Fall cover crops are very important indeed. Seeds are my favorite investment! :) We get some snow here a few times each winter but grasses like rye still stay alive all winter long. We're also lucky to already have a lot of both red and white clover here so I just let that do what it does. Right now (early April in zone 6b) I'm planning to also grow summertime cover crops in areas of our property that won't be used as gardens this year, but to get them ready for next fall's covers and then next spring's planting. I intend to use a lot of black oil sunflowers, okra and various beans, because the seeds are inexpensive and they grow all summer here. I've found that all three of those have strong roots that can dig into our heavy clay soil for me. I want to try some buckwheat and alfalfa in a couple spots, too.
@@SistersBreakingBad I usually leave the stalks standing over winter to provide habitat, then mow them down to become mulch in the spring. I leave the root systems in the ground to decompose.
This is amazing information! I appreciate your teaching us so very very much. Not only do I want to cover crop our lawn but our pasture too! OM goodness!
I'm scared of using cover crops, as the one I did 2 years ago is still causing garden take-over. From tillage turnips to alfalfa and clover, they're STUBBORN in our sub tropical climate. You're so inspiring, I'm tempted to give it another go though
@@ralfnuggs165 Oh, yes we did that. I must say, though, the gardens with the clover problems power on, even without watering, when the other gardens look near neath!
@@modee-b9s Chopping the turnips down to the ground is easy with a shovel, but they re-shoot and grow fast. I do chop the lucerne and clover down to the roots and give them to the cows, but it's still planted out with things I don't want them or the chooks eating, lol. I'm learning to embrace it. Just sprinkled clover seeds all over a new garden to help suppress weeds and have a living mulch that improves soil life. It's the lucerne that's the worst - the ROOTS! It's like the roots go as deep and as strong as it grows above ground!
OMG, thank you so much for this video. I've tried Austrian peas unsuccessfully three times. I will definitely try clover (rather than winter rye) to hopefully attract bees during summer months and keep the clover growing through the winter for the soil. I leave all vegetable plant roots to over winter in the soil but of course they eventually decompose. Again, thank you SO much.
I’m new to your channel and I enjoy watching. Wow! It’s very interesting and I’ve learned so much! There’s a lot to absorb but I’m soaking it all in. My husband recently retired and is really enjoying getting into gardening. I will share your videos with him. They are very informative. Thank you
Brilliant video! Thank you! I live in N Scotland and classify myself as Zone 7. I do the no dig/no till method and often sow green manures, but have not come across sowing cover crops over the winter. This is just in time for me to do it this year!😊
I’ve watched literally hundreds of videos on cover cropping and nobody did even close to as good of a job as you did, thank you so much. You really really helped me and I’m sure many many others.
Thank you for this video. It's very helpful. I'm an amateur beginning gardener and love to learn to have success gardening. First time I learned about cover crops a few weeks ago and I'm trying out crimson clover in a front yard flower bed and mixed seeds in a backyard raised bed. The crimson clover is slow to germinate but the mixed seeds are growing, I love it. I will make tea fertilizer out of the clover like you explain, so thank you for this info!
Crimson clover is one of my favorites. I like to let some of it grow to full maturity so it drops seeds. If it starts to take over a bed, it's easy to terminate it by just cutting it down. Then use those clippings for fertilizer tea again or just lay it down as mulch. For other areas like paths and lawns where you don't want it to grow long, white clover is great. It provides much of the same benefit, but it stays low to the ground. If you want to mow the area, just set your mower high and cut the grass, but the white clover will remain and keep pulling nitrogen into your soil all or most of the summer.
💯 percent trying to grow soil and believe it will make for a 25 percent improvement as I have a better than average soil after starting here 5 years ago and I believe cover crops are what I need a lesson and you are the or one of the best, you might be number 1 to listen to. Got to finish this later Thanks
Great information about varieties and size of cover crops and their roots. However, being a no till gardener, I did not hear nor seen in comments about how do you get rid of the tops in the spring, without using machines? If the winter rye overwinters, how do you chop off the top and can grow what you want? I also use wood chips on the top, and read that winter rye grows right through it and disintegrates the wood chips. I live in Wasaga Beach, Ontario. Thanks.
Thank you again for another great video. The chart is a big helper. I was looking for crops to plant in the fall to get my soil ready for the next season.
Can I use these tips in raised beds? I have 32 inch high raised beds. Zone 6b. New England area. 1st year gardener. Will the oats/rye/clover cover crop crowd out my plants next year? How do I prevent them from growing in the spring but get the benefit of them renewing the soil?
This was our first garden season here in Minnesota. We used new Zealand white clover in 16 round raised beds as cover crop during the growing season, which was great (thanks for a great raised bed design!). Anyway, we are in zone 4A and I am wondering if there are any cover crops that will survive our cold winters. Or should we replant each year in early spring? Also, we are adding mulches leaves and mulched dead vegetable plants on top of the round beds for winter. I left the roots in the ground and just cut the tops. Are we on the right track?
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.
Here is a list that you can choose from to help you. Look under endo mycorrhizal fungi. the top one on the list. www.rootnaturally.com/PlantListMycorrhizal.pdf
Nice to first meet you. It's interesting what I'm thinking in my head; but I don't hardly know her, crimson and clover, over and over... Really nice video, I'll be back.
This past winter was the first time I planted cover crop. I’m very happy with hairy fetch, pea, etc. The one that did best was winter rye. What should I do with the grass? Will it die off by itself or do I have to pull it?
I don't do compost either I don't see the need to compound so much stuff in my garden( each to their own) I just throw home fertilizer. I live in zone 13 heat can get brutal in Phx. When I started gardening I didn't understand why I watered so much by evening it looks like I did not water at all. My soil was hard on the surface and moist few inches down. I did lots of research I realized i had to mulch to keep the surface soil moist. Every videos I watch everybody keeps saying COMPOST COMPOST and COMPOST. My mini garden thrives without Compost just fertilizer here and there. Thank you very informative.
I have heard that dandelions thrive by breaking up dense soils with their tap roots. I think there might be a use case for intentional dandelion crops to loosen packed soils. I'm onboard for growing something that will benefit my ability to grow food, rather than letting weeds take over for the winter. Planning to try a clover mix this year.
This was a fantastic video, thank you! I am starting a garden in Florida zone 9b and wondered about which winter cover crops were best for my area. I'm experimenting this year with sunflowers, oats, wheat, rye, black eyed peas and crimson clover.
I'm in Florida also, I plant sudex for underground biomass in the summer. I cut my sudex down to 6 inchs when it is 3 to 4 feet talll.and let regrow. That increases the root mass. I don't plant winter cover crop, that is my prime time for vegetable production
What do you mean you're making a "tea" from your clover? As in a compost tea? I just started a comfrey one today. I'm a 7 yr "newbie" to gardening and I struggle. I'm in Central Saskatchewan Canada and it can get to MINUS 50F in the midwinter evenings. Luckily, the snow seems to protect things because I have loads of clover, plantain, chickweed and dandelion in my grass, atm. 🙂 I went in ground gardening in the beginning and did well for a year or two- other than a chickweed infestation. Well, then we had a super wet summer in year 3 and I switched to garden beds and have struggled ever since. But I think after watching your videos on soil health, that could be my issue. Tho, now I want to go back to in-ground gardening! Would a cover crop help a garden bed? I've left the roots in last year, but they didn't decompose over winter. It was a mess.
Dear Mark, thank you for your great videos. 2 questions - I have avoided winter rye as a cover crop because I have heard they end up competing with your crops? What is your experience? Also I bought different varieties of sunflower seeds as I was inspired by one of your previous videos. Now you say don't plant the larger sunflowers? Why? And what to do with those seeds? Also I am in zone 6B. I am home gardener - lots of fruit trees and berries and veggies and herbs. Thank you!
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.
It does take time. What I did the first season was mow over the weeds and grass, cover with compost and plant right there. If you want to grow sooner it takes input of soil. Depending on your plans and budget you can buy better compost for an inch cover for the first year.
What we call weeds grow too much bacteria in the soil. You need a ratio of 1 : 1 of bacteria to fungi in healthy soil . That is why we grow a cover crop also to increase the fungi. Mycorrhizal fungi need a living root to host it and grow from it. here is a list of thing the work together in Endo mycorrhizal fungi : www.rootnaturally.com/PlantListMycorrhizal.pdf
@@iamorganicgardening Thank you for list. Clicking on link didn't work but copy/paste to navigation bar did. I see cultivated grasses except weedy grasses". Strange that average lawn is not fungi friend, ah well. Seems to me now Back to Eden is counter productive. Maybe more temporary than living root, chop & drop. B2E does create fungal but I dont think I got worms. I got tons of millipedes though. I would like to incorporate living roots into my B2E but my arrangement of veggies and trees makes digging rows/trenches impractical. I went food forrest and crammed stuff together. My veggie garden I use compost I made from wood chips and green (lasagna style). Been pouring gallons of urine on compost pile for about 1/2 year and will do veggies come spring. I could put compost down now and grow cover crop for spring. Not crimping/killing makes better sense if you sincerely believe that it doesn't rob the final crop. I get it, chopping the cover crop sets it's growth back and feeds both cover and desired crop, feeds fungi which feeds both. Nature is genius and I will give this a try. I bought vacant property next to me. A standard lawn. How would you proceed?
Hi Mark great video as always. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I am a novice gardener, I planted Sunflower seeds in a 2×4 bed and when they were sprouting, all were infested by slugs and none of them survived, any suggestions ?I am gathering fall leaves to cover beds over the winter, will re do with spring cover crops after the winter. Will keep you posted on how it goes.
Hello Mark, Your videos are the best at explaining the science behind the processes. What are your thoughts on letting a garden go to the local off-season winter weeds for 6-7 months and then tarping or terminating the weeds before planting? Versus heavily mulching for the winter where no weeds would grow or covercrops?
First is it really weeds, here is a video of what I am talking about. ruclips.net/video/8Ym1LW7Mt_s/видео.html. Chop an drop is better than tarping. A loving root over winter is always better than a mulch if than root grows mycorrhizal fungi to grow soil. Thanks
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.
Hello. Thanks for asking. You can always till the top 1 inch of your soil. I understand that there is lots of people that say no till but never say that you can till the top one inch. Why is that .. in nature the animals are always digging the top inch for worms, bugs etc. Plus the large animals walk and crush the ground also. But nature repairs this due to healthy soil microbes and you are also doing this once a year also. You can cut the cover crop down one inch below the soil to stop it from growing one month before planting. There is lots of people doing what you are doing with manure and a tarp. Microbes need air and water, the tarp stops that from happing. When does nature ever seal off with a non air moving tarp.
@@iamorganicgardening I wondered that exact thing! Im brand new to gardening and trying to gleen from many sources; some conflict so I try to ask. Your one of the few to take the time to reply....thank you so much!
We have a Large lawn area that we just 6 months ago stared to plant all types of berries and other edibles in beginner home garden style. We have lived here for 35 years with just pretty much lawns and a perimeter of large alder, and fir and some cedar. Only when we started digging holes in our lawn were we shocked to discover how depleted our soil had gotten with years of short mowed lawn and lawn weeds. So 2 weeks ago we purchased 10 lbs of crimson red clover and doing a broadcast sowing of red clover over our existing lawn and between the various berry plants. So my question is- since the baby clover seedlings are just emerging do I wait until it has flowered and gone to seed and then only do our first mowing of the grass now? Thanks for your videos.
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge! Newbie question here: you mentioned having a nice, thick mulch in place during the growing season, and then growing cover crops over fall/winter. But how do you sow the cover crop where a thick layer of mulch is already in place? It is just a matter of raking back all the mulch to sow the cover crops seeds? Thanks!
That beautiful thick mulch is almost gone by the end of the garden season. The soil biology eats it. I place about 8 inch's of leaves down. By Fall only 2 inch's is left. But YES. rake it back and plant away. Great question. THANK YOU.
This has been puzzling me too. I will be trying this and had already decided to pull back my mulch. Unfortunately here in arid So. Calif. it doesn't break down that much over the summer.
Awesome thanks so much, actually best video if seen on this. Starting to understand, I’m gonna do a clover and winter rye, hoping I’ll crimp the rye in the spring and plant my tomatos melons cucumbers there. Then the clover half put the rest like corn potato carrots what do you think of this?
Thank you so much for this! We bought an acreage with ten acres in alfalfa in very sandy soil. We've been told that we need to till and start over with a different crop for a season and replant alfalfa the year after. Can we just do a cover crop and save our hay field from being disked up?
Mark I learned from you earlier about the huge roots of the sunflower and now I followed the sunflower 2 seasons without disturb the soil ( no tilting) it's the best result I've tried and I tested 6 other methods and less work and less water and definitely my most productive way for tomatoes But I've been trying to raise the biggest sunflower I can and I layout the sunflower in a square each space where I plan to follow with the tomato seedlings and do follow the sunflower for 2 seasons of tomato seedlings. You said use the medium sunflower I'm asking how do you space the sunflower plant? Thanks
@@iamorganicgardening will do one 50 ft row and a short 20 ft row both about 3 ft wide. I'm expecting great results. I'm actually harvesting extra sunflower seeds as I'm reading this thanks Thanks
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?
Really interesting I was under the impression that this "residue" at 12:02 was thatch and that creates a favorable environment for pests and disease, an unfavorable growing environment. The meaning behind that comment is in the example of something simple like grass, where learned about this in lawncare, it prevents a fuller/thicker growth of the medium that is attempting to be grown. I can see how this would be beneficial with plants like vegetables for the purpose of soil temperature. However, for cover crops, I am not so certain. What is your take on this?
Soil is a living thing with Billions of good soil microbes per tablespoon of soil. They need to eat. Mulch or Thatch will be eaten by them, In lawn care they teach you to by products that they sell you so they make money. They do this to farmers also. Nature does not need our help.
Where can I find more information about planting winter cover crops in the fall for harsh winters? Here in Northern California in the mountains we get a lot of freezing temperatures and a little bit of snow. I didn't understand you said if the roots are going to die off in the winter they won't serve their purpose, or.. it seemed a bit nuanced. Thank you!
Here s a link to my Facebook page, see cover crop chart the photo section : facebook.com/iamorganicgardening/photos/pb.100032330660931.-2207520000/911391899485568/?type=3
I am impressed of your knowledge. Would love to hear your thoughts on the climate change we currently experience and its impact on the food production. Thanx and much love from Bulgarya.
It simple, just cut it down to a 1 inch below the soil level, No not till in. Depending on the size of the garden you have use a weed Wacker to cut the green foliage of first. Then rake away the foliage . Just use a hoe to cut 1 inch below soil. Hope this helps. Do this 30 days before planting.
Hi Mark. I built a raised bed similar to what you showed (much lower but using a lot of wood chips, then leaves and grass clippings, a little high-clay soil. After 3 years I threw a bunch of sunflower seeds and some wildflower seed mix and I think I must have also thrown in buckwheat just to see if I could get it going as a growing medium. Last year when I tried just sunflower seeds, no luck at all. This year I got a ton of buckwheat but nothing else. Should we leave the roots in this fall or cut them off? Is there a chance the sunflowers might still come through?
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.
Hi Mark, thanks for sharing your experience! I'm new with cover crops and am wondering if I plant winter rye (zone 3) in the Fall, do I then pull out for Spring? Or do I plant my tomatoes and herbs around the cover crops? Not sure how this works?
I would like to use a cover crop for the first time. I live in Maine with lots of snow and annuals that freeze therefore I have a short growing season. I do no till gardening in raised beds and put my compost or manure in fall. I want a cover crop to add more aggregates to my soil and to feed the micro herd for the winter. However I don’t want to plant something that will become a perennial weed in my vegetable beds. I thought I would need something that died over winter but your video changed my perspective. What cover crop would you recommend?
Winter Rye is the name of it. You plant it as soon as you garden season is done. I have several videos on it. You ut it down in the spring 30 days prior to planting your crops.
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I remember the local farmers in southern New Hampshire generally planted "winter rye" in the late fall every year, and often did crop rotation as well. We were taught these things in school in those days. (For the benefit of those of us who lacked some of the upscale amenities like indoor plumbing, we were also taught that the outhouse should always be down the hill from the well )
I can't recommend rye highly enough for this. It lets other plants grow around it, but it's capable of growing through wood chips, if you mulch with them, and degrades them insanely fast over the winter. Also, if you keep animals, rye really seems to like gentle grazing and seed foragers. It feeds my chickens very well, and squirrels also eat the seeds
THANK YOU so very much for sharing all this great information. Happy gardening
Can you plant winter cultures and not take rye down?
Yasssss! Thank you for this. I've got lots of rye berries, wood chips, and chickens so this is perfect!
Same experience here on Vancouver Island BC. Rye has worked well in a test I did.
Side note: Rye seed really attracts rats and never seems to stale in that regard. So I keep some for my traps, works better than peanut butter.
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!
I am so very happy for you and your garden. Green beans and peas will help your soil very much aa a food crop due to a great root system. If you can get your hands on use coffee and mix in your soil very helpful also. THANK YOU for sharing this with me, your a amazing gardener.
Your post inspires me!
@@sararampton654 thanks Sara, I am trying to make a difference in my little neighborhood. I started a gardening & composting group on my local Nextdoor group & lots of people bring me their leaves & stuff that would normally be left out @ the curb. If you don’t know about Nextdoor check it out! I try to educate people about growing their own food naturally!
I'm really lucky, because I have a native vetch that handles nitrogen mineralization very well if I just leave it alone. We also get very good cover of rye growing every year. My yard takes care of winter cover for me, and when I kill it in the spring and plant in it, everything does well. Also, oats have taken to being a consistent winter grass from when I fed chickens there. We had a cool, wet spring two years ago that killed it, but we had millet coming up for four years, but that grows in the summer, so it's not in the garden.
I am also a 78 year old woman who has a large garden that I grow for the food bank. I could share with my neighbors but they don’t offer to help!
First time I learned about cover crops! We've been wrongly tilling all these years.
You explained this so clearly. Thank you!
And THANK YOU for understanding.
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.
VERY NICE to hear. THANK YOU so much for sharing this.
How do you keep the Mexican sunflower from growing where you drop it? Turkscap hibiscus too is good but i had to kick it around a couple times cause is kept growing back.
I'm thinking now, probably cause we get so much rain in Florida.
Do you put them in the ground starting fall time? I live in So Cal and I wanted to do a mix of cover crops, but I got confused towards the end when he said that the roots will not go as deep 😢
Comfrey is very difficult to get rid of once planted. How do you kill it when you’re ready to plant your regular garden?
@charleskelm3703
Is your Comfrey the cultivar, Russian Bocking 14, that doesn't produce viable seeds? If not, that could be why you're fighting a losing battle with it. In this case, you want to prune every sign of flowering before it releases seed. Nip it in the bud.
To keep RussianBocking14 in check, each spring, you can slice straight down into the soil about 18 inches out around the Comfrey plants you want to keep. RB 14, reproduces by sending out runners, so cutting them off near the end of spring, will help to keep it in check.
Otherwise, my sheepish side wants to encourage you to start a Comfrey Root propagation business.😂
My father (old Nebraska farmer) always pointed out that rye as a cover crop is so beneficial because it has such a dense fibrous root mass. So much so that for every ton of green matter on the surface, there is 3 tons of fine brown matter below. This can break up hard pan, pull up nutrients from down deep. Most importantly the amount of earth worms skyrockets mixing the soil.
We would spot seed rye into the weakest soils in huge corn fields. Over many years these weak patches start to match the better soils around them.
Most other cover crops will only have 1-1.5 tons below the surface for each green ton above.
THANK YOU for sharing this. Sorghum Sudan grass is another great soil builder for summer cover crop.
Hi, dear organic gardener! Thank you for sharing this information with us, and , please, tell me, where can I buy winter rye seeds and others for cover crops. Thank you so much!
One of the best explanations about the benefits of cover cropping I've heard.
Thanks.
Wow, THANK YOU so very much. Have a great year.
Great video. Showing roots help us to better understand!
Great, here to help and share. THANKS
The best ever educational and practical video about cover crops and root roles in building soil and microorganisms.
THANK YOU so very much. From my farm soil and me.
Don't forget yo hit the like button.
It is a little late but us here in southern Wisconsin, Zone 5a, just planted our first crop of annual rye today. We hope that it will still be able to germinate and loosen/build the soil. This is our first year of starting a garden so we cannot wait for next to see what it has in store. Our neighbors think we are nuts with collecting as many leaves as we have. Thank you so much for so much valuable information you have provided through these episodes.
Our neighbors too... They're so nosy. We have neighbors on two sides of the house and thank God no neighbors in the back side except it's a wooded land and deer are mainly our neighbors from that side. But one of the neighbors is a retired elderly and she never leaves the house. So far she's made comments like "You have so many containers... What you're growing will be eaten up by deer" ... So I am thinking of setting up a wooden fence. Pretty sure she will make a comment and I will tell her it's for the deer but actually I want to block her view, she doesn't know we've already solved the deer issue haha... We also collect leaves, matter of fact today we just made a leaf mold. When we were creating our first pile of compost 6 weeks ago we could see neighbors looking .. So now I have my compost in containers.. but they can't get hot (maybe because of the cold weather, but it's frustrating)... I definitely need to build a fence, or a wall! LOL
I am in the Madison area and I collect multiple trailer loads of leaves in the fall and the following year always manage to run out. As a new gardener, I would highly encourage you to put some energy in creating leaf mold. Leaf mold has so many applications plus being a fungal decomposition you really can't screw it up, like traditional hot composting. Another resource I would recommend is Gardener Scott, he has many pertinent videos for new and experienced gardeners alike. Good luck in your first year garden!!!
I know the feeling lol
@@cheesekake1841 Compost needs mass, the small containers will not allow enough heat to be generated. Your neighbor is trying to tell you the small containers do not work and are ugly.
I have planted living fences to block the view from the neighbors' houses. I'm hoping that the combination of Jerusalem artichokes and flowering vines will give them something to focus on and the deer something to browse upon! I too have lots of bags of leaves this time of year.
I believe you could still plant a mix with only 2 months to grow before freezing as I have read that is the purpose of radish. It grows and gets killed in the fall and then rots and leaves a hole for water and air to enter your soil... It might be smaller than you want but it would still be beneficial... Same thing with planting sunflowers even though they might not have time to bloom, they could still help. I would plant them in a mix that contains winter rye which can take over when the frost sensitives die.
Great information!
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)!
My pleasure to share with you. Thank You for your kind words.
Thank for sharing this awesome and informative video with me...loved, loved, loved it... watched it a few times to get a good understanding of cover cropping... I just terminated buckwheat which I left on the soil but I don't know where to go from there....next time I will go with the winter rye because of its massive root system.
Will I have to cover the buckwheat with landscape fabric till next planting season?
Mark, one of the best teachers I have heard.
THANK YOU so very much. Here to Help always.
I read that during the depression in the 30’s, the farmers had removed all the ground roots from under their crops because they were told to grow more and more. Nothing would grow anymore and that was the cause of all the dust everywhere. One time this dust went in a huge cloud from the middle of the country (Dust Bowl?) all the way to New York.
Thank You for sharing this.
Enlightening lesson! I finally figured out what I really need to improve my clay soil, thank you! Your explanation is very clear!
Wonderful! Here to help and share. THANK YOU.
it works!!❤
Greetings from northern/coastal Massachusetts zone 6A. I've been watching your videos since the beginning, and have not commented before this .. 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
THANK YOU so very much for your kind words. I love how nature works and as a low income farmer it helps me so much to have nature help me to produce vegs. Have a great year ahead.
I grow greens in my raised beds and have planted winter rye or med red clover between the rows. I keep the cover crops cut down to keep them from shading the greens until they get large enough to not be shaded. I try to keep roots in the ground at all times.❤
FANTASTIC... Thank You for sharing.
Brilliantly presented. Thanks!
One of the best visuals you have given was the sponge. That made so much sense. You are a great teacher
I am in zone 7 and I use a mixed cover cropthat I order from Amazon. It is from Trueleaf market and has 10 types of cover crops. I ordered 5 lbs for $19 with free shipping. I used it in me raised beds last year and found so many worms in the spring when I cut it down an left it as mulch.
VERY Glad to hear this. THANK YOU for sharing.
Just bought it from amazon. Great price. THANK YOU for telling me.
I just ordered this. Going to try it in about 500 sq feet of raised beds.
Zone 6b Northeastern Pennsylvania
Aug 26th 2022
I've used winter rye with hairy vetch in the past and it's been amazing how it transforms soil. Specifically we transformed a lawn area. Did a great job. We let it grow about 6 feet which was really cool. I'm sure the neighbors thought we were absolutely nuts. But what are they growing? Fescue?
Do you til it when you plant your crops the next season?
@@lettyortiz9700 no tilling!
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. :)
Great to hear. Your soil will Thank You. Enjoy.
Fall cover crops are very important indeed. Seeds are my favorite investment! :) We get some snow here a few times each winter but grasses like rye still stay alive all winter long. We're also lucky to already have a lot of both red and white clover here so I just let that do what it does.
Right now (early April in zone 6b) I'm planning to also grow summertime cover crops in areas of our property that won't be used as gardens this year, but to get them ready for next fall's covers and then next spring's planting. I intend to use a lot of black oil sunflowers, okra and various beans, because the seeds are inexpensive and they grow all summer here. I've found that all three of those have strong roots that can dig into our heavy clay soil for me.
I want to try some buckwheat and alfalfa in a couple spots, too.
When your okra beans and sunflowers are done, do you leave them there to decompose?
@@SistersBreakingBad I usually leave the stalks standing over winter to provide habitat, then mow them down to become mulch in the spring. I leave the root systems in the ground to decompose.
I love it. Thank you very much. I learned a lot. Things are changing fast since I got my MG Certification 20 years ago.
This is amazing information! I appreciate your teaching us so very very much. Not only do I want to cover crop our lawn but our pasture too! OM goodness!
So nice of you to say. THANK YOU.
I'm scared of using cover crops, as the one I did 2 years ago is still causing garden take-over. From tillage turnips to alfalfa and clover, they're STUBBORN in our sub tropical climate. You're so inspiring, I'm tempted to give it another go though
Put cardboard down
@@ralfnuggs165 Oh, yes we did that. I must say, though, the gardens with the clover problems power on, even without watering, when the other gardens look near neath!
@@modee-b9s Chopping the turnips down to the ground is easy with a shovel, but they re-shoot and grow fast. I do chop the lucerne and clover down to the roots and give them to the cows, but it's still planted out with things I don't want them or the chooks eating, lol. I'm learning to embrace it. Just sprinkled clover seeds all over a new garden to help suppress weeds and have a living mulch that improves soil life. It's the lucerne that's the worst - the ROOTS! It's like the roots go as deep and as strong as it grows above ground!
Hy verstaan die natuur ,die beginsel dat hy dit self prakties doen sé ook baie.
OMG, thank you so much for this video. I've tried Austrian peas unsuccessfully three times. I will definitely try clover (rather than winter rye) to hopefully attract bees during summer months and keep the clover growing through the winter for the soil.
I leave all vegetable plant roots to over winter in the soil but of course they eventually decompose.
Again, thank you SO much.
Great to hear, THANK YOU , Happy Gardening
I’m new to your channel and I enjoy watching. Wow! It’s very interesting and I’ve learned so much! There’s a lot to absorb but I’m soaking it all in. My husband recently retired and is really enjoying getting into gardening. I will share your videos with him. They are very informative. Thank you
WOW. THANK YOU so very much. Please feel free to ask anything.
Brilliant video! Thank you! I live in N Scotland and classify myself as Zone 7. I do the no dig/no till method and often sow green manures, but have not come across sowing cover crops over the winter. This is just in time for me to do it this year!😊
You will LOVE the results. Enjoy.
I’ve watched literally hundreds of videos on cover cropping and nobody did even close to as good of a job as you did, thank you so much. You really really helped me and I’m sure many many others.
THANK YOU do very much. I love understand how nature works. Always here to share.
Thank you very much! This info will help me immensely, I am a first time gardener and mostly soil we got here is clay. Be safe all.
Glad it was helpful! THANK YOU.
Thank you for this video. It's very helpful. I'm an amateur beginning gardener and love to learn to have success gardening. First time I learned about cover crops a few weeks ago and I'm trying out crimson clover in a front yard flower bed and mixed seeds in a backyard raised bed. The crimson clover is slow to germinate but the mixed seeds are growing, I love it. I will make tea fertilizer out of the clover like you explain, so thank you for this info!
Crimson clover is one of my favorites. I like to let some of it grow to full maturity so it drops seeds. If it starts to take over a bed, it's easy to terminate it by just cutting it down. Then use those clippings for fertilizer tea again or just lay it down as mulch.
For other areas like paths and lawns where you don't want it to grow long, white clover is great. It provides much of the same benefit, but it stays low to the ground. If you want to mow the area, just set your mower high and cut the grass, but the white clover will remain and keep pulling nitrogen into your soil all or most of the summer.
Thank you Mark for the in-depth video on cover crops. I need to hustle up & get mine in lolol 👵🏻👩🌾❣️
You can do it! Your soil will THANK YOU.
💯 percent trying to grow soil and believe it will make for a 25 percent improvement as I have a better than average soil after starting here 5 years ago and I believe cover crops are what I need a lesson and you are the or one of the best, you might be number 1 to listen to.
Got to finish this later
Thanks
IF you have any question no matter how small . just ask away. THANK YOU for you kind words
Simply one of the best resources out there to get folks the info we need ! Thank you so much for such great knowledge sharing.
THANK YOU so very much. Happy Gardening
Great information about varieties and size of cover crops and their roots. However, being a no till gardener, I did not hear nor seen in comments about how do you get rid of the tops in the spring, without using machines? If the winter rye overwinters, how do you chop off the top and can grow what you want? I also use wood chips on the top, and read that winter rye grows right through it and disintegrates the wood chips. I live in Wasaga Beach, Ontario. Thanks.
Thanks for a great video. Mark, you are a very good person. Thanks for wanting to help us learn about cover crops.
My pleasure!
I will definitely be utilizing sunflowers as a soil builder! Great content!
Awesome! Thank you!
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.
That was taught to me about two years ago with new science info. THANK YOU.
Thank you again for another great video. The chart is a big helper. I was looking for crops to plant in the fall to get my soil ready for the next season.
Glad it was helpful!
Can I use these tips in raised beds? I have 32 inch high raised beds. Zone 6b. New England area. 1st year gardener. Will the oats/rye/clover cover crop crowd out my plants next year? How do I prevent them from growing in the spring but get the benefit of them renewing the soil?
I love the feel of winter rye... Looks good too!
I fully agree with you. Thanks
This was our first garden season here in Minnesota. We used new Zealand white clover in 16 round raised beds as cover crop during the growing season, which was great (thanks for a great raised bed design!). Anyway, we are in zone 4A and I am wondering if there are any cover crops that will survive our cold winters. Or should we replant each year in early spring? Also, we are adding mulches leaves and mulched dead vegetable plants on top of the round beds for winter. I left the roots in the ground and just cut the tops. Are we on the right track?
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.
Here is a list that you can choose from to help you. Look under endo mycorrhizal fungi. the top one on the list. www.rootnaturally.com/PlantListMycorrhizal.pdf
Beautifully explained and very clear! And just at the right time here in the UK! Thank you
Glad it was helpful for you. Here to help and share. Happy gardening.
Absolutely! I'm in N Scotland and I have just come across this-fantastic!
Well explained Mark. You make it so easy to understand. Thanks and God Bless
THANK YOU or you kind words. Many Blessings
I learned about cover cropping and building fertile soil from hard clay in "The One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka, in 1984.
There are so much NEW info they found since then. Like glomalin
Nice to first meet you. It's interesting what I'm thinking in my head; but I don't hardly know her, crimson and clover, over and over... Really nice video, I'll be back.
This past winter was the first time I planted cover crop. I’m very happy with hairy fetch, pea, etc. The one that did best was winter rye. What should I do with the grass? Will it die off by itself or do I have to pull it?
I don't do compost either I don't see the need to compound so much stuff in my garden( each to their own) I just throw home fertilizer. I live in zone 13 heat can get brutal in Phx. When I started gardening I didn't understand why I watered so much by evening it looks like I did not water at all. My soil was hard on the surface and moist few inches down. I did lots of research I realized i had to mulch to keep the surface soil moist. Every videos I watch everybody keeps saying COMPOST COMPOST and COMPOST. My mini garden thrives without Compost just fertilizer here and there. Thank you very informative.
I fully agree with you. Happy soil gardening.
Very informative video Mark. Thank you for sharing your in depth knowledge and experience. Greatly appreciated. (New Zealand)
Here to help and share. THANK YOU.
At 13:41 you can see a root following a worm tunnel in the center of the screen. This is another anvantage of good worm activity in your soil
YES, Great eye. Those amazing worms.
I have heard that dandelions thrive by breaking up dense soils with their tap roots. I think there might be a use case for intentional dandelion crops to loosen packed soils. I'm onboard for growing something that will benefit my ability to grow food, rather than letting weeds take over for the winter. Planning to try a clover mix this year.
You will be very happy that you did.
Thanks for all your information knowledge and hard work I certainly appreciate it central Florida zone nine cheers
Much appreciated also , THANK YOU.
This was a fantastic video, thank you! I am starting a garden in Florida zone 9b and wondered about which winter cover crops were best for my area. I'm experimenting this year with sunflowers, oats, wheat, rye, black eyed peas and crimson clover.
I'm in Florida also, I plant sudex for underground biomass in the summer. I cut my sudex down to 6 inchs when it is 3 to 4 feet talll.and let regrow. That increases the root mass. I don't plant winter cover crop, that is my prime time for vegetable production
@@Axelcat11 Thank you! I'd never heard of Sudex so looking into it now.
Great information that I can use in my garden.
Very Nice to hear, Thanks
Hi, thanks for your channel. What zone are you in?
Zone 6b New Jersey.
Best gardeninf video ever
THANK YOU so very much. Happy Gardening
What do you mean you're making a "tea" from your clover? As in a compost tea? I just started a comfrey one today. I'm a 7 yr "newbie" to gardening and I struggle. I'm in Central Saskatchewan Canada and it can get to MINUS 50F in the midwinter evenings. Luckily, the snow seems to protect things because I have loads of clover, plantain, chickweed and dandelion in my grass, atm. 🙂 I went in ground gardening in the beginning and did well for a year or two- other than a chickweed infestation. Well, then we had a super wet summer in year 3 and I switched to garden beds and have struggled ever since. But I think after watching your videos on soil health, that could be my issue. Tho, now I want to go back to in-ground gardening! Would a cover crop help a garden bed? I've left the roots in last year, but they didn't decompose over winter. It was a mess.
Thanks for this helpful info. I learned so much!
Glad it was helpful!
What a great explanation! Thank you for all the great info!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This was so helpful and informative! Thank you!
THANK YOU so very much. Enjoy
Thankyou. I thought it might be a good idea to keep roots in the ground
Very informative and helpful. Thank you!
This is exactly what I’ve been looking for, thank you.
Glad I could help! Thank you.
Dear Mark, thank you for your great videos. 2 questions - I have avoided winter rye as a cover crop because I have heard they end up competing with your crops? What is your experience? Also I bought different varieties of sunflower seeds as I was inspired by one of your previous videos. Now you say don't plant the larger sunflowers? Why? And what to do with those seeds? Also I am in zone 6B. I am home gardener - lots of fruit trees and berries and veggies and herbs. Thank you!
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.
It does take time. What I did the first season was mow over the weeds and grass, cover with compost and plant right there. If you want to grow sooner it takes input of soil. Depending on your plans and budget you can buy better compost for an inch cover for the first year.
What we call weeds grow too much bacteria in the soil. You need a ratio of 1 : 1 of bacteria to fungi in healthy soil . That is why we grow a cover crop also to increase the fungi. Mycorrhizal fungi need a living root to host it and grow from it. here is a list of thing the work together in Endo mycorrhizal fungi : www.rootnaturally.com/PlantListMycorrhizal.pdf
@@iamorganicgardening Thank you for list. Clicking on link didn't work but copy/paste to navigation bar did. I see cultivated grasses except weedy grasses". Strange that average lawn is not fungi friend, ah well. Seems to me now Back to Eden is counter productive. Maybe more temporary than living root, chop & drop. B2E does create fungal but I dont think I got worms. I got tons of millipedes though. I would like to incorporate living roots into my B2E but my arrangement of veggies and trees makes digging rows/trenches impractical. I went food forrest and crammed stuff together. My veggie garden I use compost I made from wood chips and green (lasagna style). Been pouring gallons of urine on compost pile for about 1/2 year and will do veggies come spring. I could put compost down now and grow cover crop for spring. Not crimping/killing makes better sense if you sincerely believe that it doesn't rob the final crop. I get it, chopping the cover crop sets it's growth back and feeds both cover and desired crop, feeds fungi which feeds both. Nature is genius and I will give this a try. I bought vacant property next to me. A standard lawn. How would you proceed?
Thank you i have been putting coffee grounds and my egg shells in the garden not knowing if this was ok
So what do I do in the spring, cut off the tops to use as green manure and leave the roots in the ground? Plant around them? I have raised beds
Yes, you are 100% correct. Just cut 30 days before you plant so the roots die off. THANKS
Thank you for this information! I think I understand this a little better now. I have much to learn though
That is the best thing about gardening..Learning.
Hi Mark great video as always. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I am a novice gardener, I planted Sunflower seeds in a 2×4 bed and when they were sprouting, all were infested by slugs and none of them survived, any suggestions ?I am gathering fall leaves to cover beds over the winter, will re do with spring cover crops after the winter. Will keep you posted on how it goes.
Sluggo
What winter plants do ya recommend for zone 7
Hello Mark, Your videos are the best at explaining the science behind the processes. What are your thoughts on letting a garden go to the local off-season winter weeds for 6-7 months and then tarping or terminating the weeds before planting? Versus heavily mulching for the winter where no weeds would grow or covercrops?
First is it really weeds, here is a video of what I am talking about. ruclips.net/video/8Ym1LW7Mt_s/видео.html. Chop an drop is better than tarping. A loving root over winter is always better than a mulch if than root grows mycorrhizal fungi to grow soil. Thanks
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.
Hello. Thanks for asking. You can always till the top 1 inch of your soil. I understand that there is lots of people that say no till but never say that you can till the top one inch. Why is that .. in nature the animals are always digging the top inch for worms, bugs etc. Plus the large animals walk and crush the ground also. But nature repairs this due to healthy soil microbes and you are also doing this once a year also. You can cut the cover crop down one inch below the soil to stop it from growing one month before planting. There is lots of people doing what you are doing with manure and a tarp. Microbes need air and water, the tarp stops that from happing. When does nature ever seal off with a non air moving tarp.
@@iamorganicgardening I wondered that exact thing! Im brand new to gardening and trying to gleen from many sources; some conflict so I try to ask. Your one of the few to take the time to reply....thank you so much!
@@iamorganicgardeningHow do you cut an inch below the soil?
We have a Large lawn area that we just 6 months ago stared to plant all types of berries and other edibles in beginner home garden style. We have lived here for 35 years with just pretty much lawns and a perimeter of large alder, and fir and some cedar.
Only when we started digging holes in our lawn were we shocked to discover how depleted our soil had gotten with years of short mowed lawn and lawn weeds.
So 2 weeks ago we purchased 10 lbs of crimson red clover and doing a broadcast sowing of red clover over our existing lawn and between the various berry plants.
So my question is- since the baby clover seedlings are just emerging do I wait until it has flowered and gone to seed and then only do our first mowing of the grass now?
Thanks for your videos.
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge! Newbie question here: you mentioned having a nice, thick mulch in place during the growing season, and then growing cover crops over fall/winter. But how do you sow the cover crop where a thick layer of mulch is already in place? It is just a matter of raking back all the mulch to sow the cover crops seeds? Thanks!
That beautiful thick mulch is almost gone by the end of the garden season. The soil biology eats it. I place about 8 inch's of leaves down. By Fall only 2 inch's is left. But YES. rake it back and plant away. Great question. THANK YOU.
@@iamorganicgardening Thank you again - so good to know. Wishing you a bountiful season!!!
This has been puzzling me too. I will be trying this and had already decided to pull back my mulch. Unfortunately here in arid So. Calif. it doesn't break down that much over the summer.
Composting ended up making muck and compacting on me. I've gone to cover cropping and biodiversity planting years ago.
EXCELLENT . Thank you for sharing.
6-7 months with no outside gardening?!?!?!
YIKES
We need to move you to GA......-KJ
I agree with you 100 %. Thank You
Great information same as always. Thank you very much.
My pleasure to share and help . THANK YOU.
Awesome thanks so much, actually best video if seen on this. Starting to understand, I’m gonna do a clover and winter rye, hoping I’ll crimp the rye in the spring and plant my tomatos melons cucumbers there. Then the clover half put the rest like corn potato carrots what do you think of this?
Love love this is what I’m talking about.
Here to help and share. THANK YOU.
This was super helpful, thank you so much!
I'm so glad to hear that. Have a great week ahead.
Thank you so much for this! We bought an acreage with ten acres in alfalfa in very sandy soil. We've been told that we need to till and start over with a different crop for a season and replant alfalfa the year after. Can we just do a cover crop and save our hay field from being disked up?
Mark I learned from you earlier about the huge roots of the sunflower and now I followed the sunflower 2 seasons without disturb the soil ( no tilting) it's the best result I've tried and I tested 6 other methods and less work and less water and definitely my most productive way for tomatoes
But I've been trying to raise the biggest sunflower I can and I layout the sunflower in a square each space where I plan to follow with the tomato seedlings and do follow the sunflower for 2 seasons of tomato seedlings.
You said use the medium sunflower I'm asking how do you space the sunflower plant?
Thanks
Every 6 inches apart.
@@iamorganicgardening will do one 50 ft row and a short 20 ft row both about 3 ft wide. I'm expecting great results. I'm actually harvesting extra sunflower seeds as I'm reading this thanks
Thanks
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?
Your cool crop is your cover crop. Except your beets and mustard. Garlic and onions , shallots would help alongside and not shade.
Can you show other cover crops
Just type in word ( cover crops ) in the search line.
Really interesting I was under the impression that this "residue" at 12:02 was thatch and that creates a favorable environment for pests and disease, an unfavorable growing environment. The meaning behind that comment is in the example of something simple like grass, where learned about this in lawncare, it prevents a fuller/thicker growth of the medium that is attempting to be grown. I can see how this would be beneficial with plants like vegetables for the purpose of soil temperature. However, for cover crops, I am not so certain. What is your take on this?
Soil is a living thing with Billions of good soil microbes per tablespoon of soil. They need to eat. Mulch or Thatch will be eaten by them, In lawn care they teach you to by products that they sell you so they make money. They do this to farmers also. Nature does not need our help.
Where can I find more information about planting winter cover crops in the fall for harsh winters? Here in Northern California in the mountains we get a lot of freezing temperatures and a little bit of snow. I didn't understand you said if the roots are going to die off in the winter they won't serve their purpose, or.. it seemed a bit nuanced. Thank you!
Here s a link to my Facebook page, see cover crop chart the photo section : facebook.com/iamorganicgardening/photos/pb.100032330660931.-2207520000/911391899485568/?type=3
Thank you for this information 🌿
My pleasure 😊
Burdock and Thistle would work well to open up the ground and shade out weeds . Scattered throughout winter wheat would be great .
I am impressed of your knowledge. Would love to hear your thoughts on the climate change we currently experience and its impact on the food production. Thanx and much love from Bulgarya.
Do u have a video about terminating cover crop? ❤
It simple, just cut it down to a 1 inch below the soil level, No not till in. Depending on the size of the garden you have use a weed Wacker to cut the green foliage of first. Then rake away the foliage . Just use a hoe to cut 1 inch below soil. Hope this helps. Do this 30 days before planting.
@@iamorganicgardening thank you 🙂💗
I learned a lot. Thankyou.
Glad it was helpful! THANK YOU.
Hi Mark. I built a raised bed similar to what you showed (much lower but using a lot of wood chips, then leaves and grass clippings, a little high-clay soil. After 3 years I threw a bunch of sunflower seeds and some wildflower seed mix and I think I must have also thrown in buckwheat just to see if I could get it going as a growing medium. Last year when I tried just sunflower seeds, no luck at all. This year I got a ton of buckwheat but nothing else. Should we leave the roots in this fall or cut them off? Is there a chance the sunflowers might still come through?
Thank you! 🍃🌸🍃
Always here to Help. Happy Gardening
How hard is it to kill offthe winter rye in the spring? & How?
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.
Well Said. Thanks
When it is time to plant your garden, do you mow over the clover/rye then plant?
Thank you very much, I will get on it
Please do! And HAPPY Easy Gardening
Hi Mark, thanks for sharing your experience! I'm new with cover crops and am wondering if I plant winter rye (zone 3) in the Fall, do I then pull out for Spring? Or do I plant my tomatoes and herbs around the cover crops? Not sure how this works?
Please watch this video. Click on this link: if you have more question please ask: ruclips.net/video/7cQMmwuAfaE/видео.html
I would like to use a cover crop for the first time. I live in Maine with lots of snow and annuals that freeze therefore I have a short growing season. I do no till gardening in raised beds and put my compost or manure in fall. I want a cover crop to add more aggregates to my soil and to feed the micro herd for the winter. However I don’t want to plant something that will become a perennial weed in my vegetable beds. I thought I would need something that died over winter but your video changed my perspective. What cover crop would you recommend?
Winter Rye is the name of it. You plant it as soon as you garden season is done. I have several videos on it. You ut it down in the spring 30 days prior to planting your crops.