Cover Crops and Crop Covers

Ah, but the adventure in gardening never ceases!  While I usually associate cover crops with winter, covering your crops is a necessity for us Floridians during summer.  If you want to remain sane, that is, and don’t take kindly to heat exhaustion. Good God–it’s hot around theses parts in August!  Even the poor dogs are complaining. No stretch for our yellow Lab Cody-boy.  Dog never met an air-conditioner he didn’t absolutely adore. Or covet–depending on where he was sleeping that night. 🙂  Don’t ask. Long story.

Any-who, it’s hot. Too hot to garden, too hot to weed, too hot for anything but the pool. Maybe the beach if the trek through the sand weren’t so treacherous, searing the tender skin clear off the bottoms of my feet.  Ouch–but I don’t remember that being a problem as a kid!  Eh, nostalgia 101. 

Now, moving right along, what’s a gardener to do in the scorch of summertime?  She covers her crops, that’s what she does.  If she knows whats good for her, anyway.  Not only will this action keep the weeds at bay, but it will kill those pesky grubs and nematodes too.  Yep, you guessed it.  It’s our very own rendition of the sun-baked oven.  By covering the rows with black (or red) paper we can eliminate the bugs beneath the ground.  (If you plan to research the gem of advice, the proper term is “solarizing the soil.”)  Now, professional grade paper works way better than home gardener grade, but if you can’t lay your hands on the tough stuff, you may want to double up on the home-style version for the same effect:  trap the heat, heat the soil, fry the varmints and prepare for planting.  Isn’t this fun?

I do love a multi-tasker.  Makes the world go round with the ease and flow.  The kids and I have covered just about our entire garden with plain old weed cloth prevention paper and while it doesn’t look pretty (anchor pins don’t work well against summertime thunderstorms so we used anything we could to help weigh the paper down!), it is efficient at preventing weeds–a must in our garden if we plan to avoid mutiny.

Do make sure you perform all of this wonderfully productive work during the early morning or early evening hours, else you fry your brain in the process.  But what if you don’t live in Florida? And don’t have grubs and nematodes?

No nematodes or grubs?  Why, that’s not fair!  It’s not right!  Who are you that you should waltz through the growing season without these dastardly beasts?  Not to worry. Once I’ve had my throw down I’ll haul myself up, brush the dirt from my knees, wipe my hands clean and suggest you may be interested in some cover crops. They’re totally organic, great soil conditioners and even work to keep the weeds at bay.

What’s a cover crop?  Well now, you’ve come to the right place!  Cover crops are all kinds of things, from legumes to rye, brassicas to flowers, but more important–they all have a purpose.  Say you’re an organic gardener (of course you are) and you want to enrich your soil with organic matter.  One way to achieve this is by planting a bean crop, also known as “green manure,” because beans put nitrogen into the soil.  And plants LOVE nitrogen.  This concept is not only great for amending the soil, but it’s also key to the concept of crop rotation.  For a winter cover crop, try a heavy seeding of rye in your garden like you see here planted at the Blue Horizon Farm.  Not only will it improve your soil, but it’s cold tolerant ANd thick enough to provide great weed prevention.  Gotta love that! 

But cover crops can do more than improve soil and prevent weeds.  Planting mustard has shown to suppress fungal disease populations through the release of naturally occurring toxic chemicals during the degradation of glucosinolade compounds in their plant cell tissues while other crops are planted to lure pests away from your garden.  Sort of a pest-trap-planting, if you will. 

Isn’t this great? So whether you’re covering crops or growing crop cover–there’s something to keep everyone active no matter the time of year. Hip-hip-hooray!