How to Benefit from Cover Cropping

Team up with these botanical superstars to improve your garden’s soil over the off-season!

 

 

As every gardener knows, healthy soil is the key to growing healthy plants. Planting cover crops in the fall is an easy and effective way to enhance your garden’s soil, improving its yield and vitality come next season. In this guide, we’ll explain how and why to take advantage of this smart soil-building technique!

 

What is a Cover Crop? 

As the name suggests, cover crops are plants you grow to cover up your soil. Unlike vegetable crops, they don’t yield any food; their sole purpose is to enhance and protect the soil in the spaces between plants or in empty garden beds during the off-season. Common cover crops include buckwheat, rye, and clover.  

 

Why Should I Plant Cover Crops in My Pennsylvania Garden? 

Cover crops are like eco-friendly fertilizers, aerators, mulch, and weed managers all in one. Here are the specific ways they help build your garden’s soil:  

• Enhances Soil Structure: Cover crops help maintain soil structure by preventing erosion, compaction, and nutrient leaching. They also increase organic matter content, which enhances your soil’s ability to hold water and nutrients. Roots of some crops, especially annual grasses, also aerate the soil, breaking up compaction and improving its structure.

• Suppresses Weeds: Many cover crops outcompete weeds for sunlight, water, and nutrients. However, with a cover crop in place, you have a living mulch that doesn’t give weeds any room to germinate. 

• Adds Nutrients: Certain cover crops, known as nitrogen-fixing legumes, capture atmospheric nitrogen and fix it into the soil for future crops to use, essentially infusing your garden with organically sourced fertilizer. Plus, when you turn cover crops into the soil, they form a “green manure” that provides even more nutrients as it breaks down. 

• Controls Pests and Diseases: Some cover crops, like mustards, release compounds that deter pests and diseases, becoming natural pest deterrents when you turn them into the soil.

• Creates Habitat: Flowering cover crops provide late-season shelter and food sources for pollinators and other beneficial insects. 

 

Selecting the Right Cover Crop for Your Pennsylvania Garden 

Your choice of cover crop will depend on your specific goals and the time of year you plant them. That being said, here are some of the best cover crop options for Pennsylvania gardens:

Annual Grasses: Grains like winter rye, wheat, and oats are hardy cover crops that can be planted in the fall and are excellent at preventing erosion, breaking up compaction, preventing weeds, and adding organic matter to the soil.

Legumes: Crimson clover, hairy vetch, and winter peas are common legume cover crops that fix nitrogen in the soil and suppress weeds. You can plant them in the fall or early spring. 

Broadleaves: Broadleaf cover crops like mustard, alyssum, and buckwheat are excellent choices to plant in the spaces between your spring and summer crops. They bring nutrients into the soil when you till them in, suppress weeds, and attract pollinators. 

Note: You can also mix different cover crops together. For example, plant an annual grass with a legume so that you enjoy the benefits of both.

 

How Do You Plant Cover Crops? 

In the fall, broadcast the cover crop seeds into your garden beds. They’ll start to germinate before the ground freezes and continue growing in the early spring. Once they flower, cut them down and either turn the entire plant into the soil or till in the roots only, adding the leaves and stalks to your compost pile. Tilling everything into the soil is the most common method and adds more organic matter. However, it also requires more work. If you want to do less tilling, use the compost method. Regardless of your method of choice, just remember that you’ll receive the most benefit from your cover crops if you cut them down in the window after they’ve flowered but before they’ve gone to seed.  

 

Planting Cover Crops in the Spring and Summer 

Fall isn’t the only time your garden can benefit from cover crops; varieties like clover, alyssum, mustard, and buckwheat also work wonders when planted between your vegetables in the spring and early summer! They suppress weeds, build soil, and attract pollinators, naturally reducing your workload and benefiting your soil. Consider giving them a go next growing season! 

There’s no better way to benefit your garden than by taking care of your soil, and planting cover crops is a smart, inexpensive, and eco-friendly way to do just that over the off-season. For more tips on planting cover crops, come visit our garden center in Glenside, PA!