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    Homegrown Humus: Cover Crops in a No-Till Garden: Permaculture Gardener, #1
    Homegrown Humus: Cover Crops in a No-Till Garden: Permaculture Gardener, #1
    Homegrown Humus: Cover Crops in a No-Till Garden: Permaculture Gardener, #1
    Ebook73 pages41 minutes

    Homegrown Humus: Cover Crops in a No-Till Garden: Permaculture Gardener, #1

    By Anna Hess

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    About this ebook

    Homegrown humus is easy with cover crops! 

    Cover crops are a simple, cheap way to boost your soil's organic matter, to fight weeds, to prevent erosion, to attract pollinators, and to keep the ecosystem in balance. Unfortunately, most information on growing cover crops is written for people who plow their soil every year and are willing to spray herbicides. You can get all of the same benefits in a no-till garden, though, if you're clever. 

    Homegrown Humus details five no-till winners in depth --- buckwheat, sweet potatoes, oilseed radishes, rye, and oats. Profiles of other species suggest gardening conditions when you might want to try out sunflowers, annual ryegrass, barley, Austrian winter peas, crimson clover, cowpeas, or sunn hemp as well. 

    Next, you'll learn pro tips on finding cover-crop seeds, planting cover crops in a no-till garden, and easily killing cover crops without tilling or herbicide use. Understanding the C:N ratio of cover crops helps determine how long to wait between killing cover crops and planting vegetables, as well as how to maximize the amount of humus you're adding to your soil. 

    Cover crops are an advanced gardening technique bound to increase your vegetable yields, but with this book they become simple enough for beginners. Give your garden a treat --- grow some buckwheat! 

    The second edition of Homegrown Humus is fully updated, with three new chapters and a total of 54 photos.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWetknee Books
    Release dateDec 7, 2013
    ISBN9781519925763
    Homegrown Humus: Cover Crops in a No-Till Garden: Permaculture Gardener, #1

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      Book preview

      Homegrown Humus - Anna Hess

      Introduction

      Fall oats make an attractive and vigorous soil cover that naturally dies over the winter in zone 6 and colder.

      During the last four years that I've experimented with growing cover crops, my garden soil has turned darker and yields of many vegetables have increased dramatically.  Both my own honeybees and wild pollinator populations have been boosted by the copious nectar produced by buckwheat plantings, and my chickens have enjoyed the winter greenery from oilseed radish leaves.  Plus, having cover crops on the ground during the winter prevents erosion, keeps soil microorganisms humming along, and just makes the garden a more interesting place to be.  Nowadays, I can't imagine doing without my beds of buckwheat, radishes, and oats.

      Buckwheat not only improves your soil, it also feeds honeybees and native pollinators.

      Planting cover crops is a quick-and-easy afterthought in my current garden, but it wasn't always that way.  I experienced a steep learning curve when I first began growing cover crops in my chemical-free, no-till garden.  Most information on growing cover crops is written for people who plow their soil every year and are willing to spray herbicides, and I had some spectacular failures while selecting the cover crop species that would do well without these disturbances.

      Chances are you'll have to experiment as well.  The further you live from my zone-6, southwest-Virginia garden, or the more your gardening techniques differ from my own, the more of a commitment you'll need to make to figuring out the best way to slide cover crops into your fallow periods.  Luckily, experimentation is half the fun, and my experiences should at least help you set off in the right direction, inspiring you to give cover crops a try.

      Choosing the right cover crop

      What is a cover crop?

      Cover crops are plants purposely sown in the garden to improve the soil's fertility, to fight weeds, to prevent erosion, and to keep the ecosystem in balance.  These crops are sometimes known as green manure, especially if the plants are tilled into the soil.  Here, I'll be considering cover crops that can be managed without tilling in.

      The list of plants that have been used as cover crops is quite extensive, and even includes common vegetables and flowers like kale and sunflowers.  If you want to expand your experiments beyond the species in this book, two good sources of cover crop information include Managing Cover Crops Profitably—an extensive document available free at www.sare.org—and Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory's Cover Crop Chart—a simpler document that provides more breadth but less depth and that is available for free download at www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/54450000/CCC/CCC_v13_5_2012.pdf.  Between those two documents and this book, you should definitely find at least a few plants that match up well with your garden.

      Types of cover crops

      When choosing cover crops, it's handy to look at broad categories to find out which one (or ones) best fit your needs.  The first distinction to consider is whether your plants are annuals (meaning they'll go to seed and die in less than a year) or perennials (meaning they will live for many years).  Perennial

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