This whole month, I’m back in planting mode! Along with the fall veggies (spinach, baby lettuce, radishes, arugula, etc.) that I’m planting, I’m also focusing on cover crops to prepare my beds for the coming winter (you did notice the chilly nights this past week, didn’t you?).

Let’s get everyone on the same page here:

Cover Cropping is when we grow crops primarily for their benefits to the garden rather than for harvesting food. Cover cropping can have a myriad of benefits depending on the types of covers you choose, including:

• Suppressing soil diseases
• Growing a useful and inexpensive mulch
• Breaking compaction and increasing air and water penetration into the soil
• Driving out invasive weeds
• Nurturing and growing soil biology

Personally, in my garden, I am tight on time and need to build and maintain soil life as much as possible. This means adding carbon and nitrogen quickly. A fall cover crop of oats and winter peas does a great job with this! The oats add carbon and act as a trellis for the peas to grow up, while the peas (being in the legume family) take nitrogen from the air and fix it in the soil. All of this will provide food and habitat for soil fungi and bacteria, which will support our vegetables next spring. This pair makes a great late-season cover that performs wonderfully in an intensive backyard garden.

If you are exploring cover crops for yourself, there are a number of great resources available. A new one to me is https://covercrop-selector.org/, which allows you to enter your location and needs, and it will make recommendations for you along with when they need to be planted and removed. If you want a deeper dive, the foundational resource is a free PDF book from SARE: https://www.sare.org/resources/managing-cover-crops-profitably-3rd-edition/. It goes into great detail about how different crops can be worked into a growing plan and the benefits they provide to building healthy soils.

Pest Watch:

This is a great time to keep and eye out on the fall Brassicas (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, etc) for aphids and whiteflies starting to build up. By keeping them in check now it will help ensure a great harvest later this fall. Look under the leaves and at the growing tips of the plants groups of these little bugs. If you can crush groups of them by rubbing your thumb under the leaves or you can use a spray - an effective oragnic oens has been Azaguard.

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