The Best Cool Season Cover Crop Blend!

good morning everybody it is finally March and I am getting ready to start planting some of my most cold hearty vegetables out here in my Ohio Garden but in addition to vegetables I'm also going to be planting out some cool season cover crops now today on the 2nd of March I am getting ready to plant one of my all-time favorite cool season cover crop Blends it mixes the benefits of winter peas hairy veg and oats and it's cold hardy quit growing and extremely beneficial to my garden a Johnny Seed sells this particular mix as a spring green manure mix but you can just as easily buy all of the individual components and mix your own in today's video I'm going to share the specifics of planting this cover crop mix as well as a couple of different methods of termination and how I actually utilize this in my garden and share the benefits of each of the components so let's talk timing as I mentioned this is a cool season cover crop so here in Ohio I aim for planting anywhere between early March and mid-april now depending on your specific growing conditions you may be able to plant in late summer to early fall and overwinter this cover crop as well here in zone 6A in most Winters I can plant and fall this will overwinter and resume growth in the spring the recommended seeding rate is five pounds of seed per thousand square feet but I scatter so or broadcast so by hand and I'm pretty sure that I always overseed this mix after broadcast sewing I come through and just gently work and press the seeds into the soil with a rake I haven't found it necessary to ensure that they all get covered up with soil the seed seems to germinate just fine for me I try to time this out so that I'm getting it all planted just before a rain but if no rain is in the forecast you might want to put a sprinkler on the area for a it as it will speed germination significantly also be aware that when sewing in the early spring when the soil is still quite cool it can take up to three weeks for the seed to germinate last year I planted on March 6th and it really didn't take off until mid-april now because this mix does contain legumes it's got the winter peas and the hairy vetch it may benefit from the addition of an inoculant an inoculant can be applied to the seed prior to planting and this will help encourage rhizobium bacteria to colonize the roots of the peas and veg helping to gather and fix free nitrogen I don't typically inoculate and I still have really good results I've mentioned this in other videos but if you've used legume inoculant recently in the soil or have natural populations of that rhizobium bacteria you're not going to see the same kind of benefits as someone who does not have that bacteria present so it's just something to consider when deciding whether or not to apply the inoculant now I want to take a quick flashback to the Garden early last summer to show you this cover crop in action now I use this mix in two different ways I will either chop and drop it and leave it on the soil surface as a kind of a mulch or I will incorporate it into the soil as a green manure so I approach the termination of the crop in different ways depending on how and when I am using it for maximum green matter and nitrogen accumulation you want to terminate just as the peas and batch start to bloom and the oats are at milk stage this is when the seed head is still green and the developing green has a liquid milky color starch that comes out when you squeeze it but you can really cut and incorporate this anytime you're ready and it'll still provide benefit so sometimes I will plant this in the spring I'll only have about a foot of green growth and I'll chop it and mix it into the soil I'm still getting benefits that way now because I'm dealing with small areas of cover crops I do all of this by hand when I cut this blend down early it's tender enough to easily chop up with the shears when I'm cutting it at the bloom and Seed stage I find it easier to use something like a weed whacker or garden pruners as the stems can be quite tough keep in mind that if you're incorporating it into your soil chopping it into smaller sections is ideal [Music] the weed whacker works great for this but it kind of throws plant residue everywhere so when I'm done I have to rake it all back up into the planting area now I know one of the questions that a lot of folks that are new to cover crops have is how do you actually function with this how do you plant into the garden around or after your cover crops and with this one as I mentioned I either just leave it on the surface as a mulch and when I go to plant I just move it out of the way plant my seedling and then kind of push the residue back around to cover any exposed soil the idea being that this not only suppresses weeds but it's also going to rot down and add organic matter to the soil in this tomato row as I mentioned I planted this cover crop in early March when I was ready to plant my tomato seedlings in mid-may I came through and cut a small Swatch just enough to get a tomato seedling in and moved that residue out of the way I planted my tomato seedlings and then I left the rest of the cover overcrop grow to maturity now I'm at the stage where everything is in bloom and I'm coming through and cutting the rest of it down so I'm simply coming through snipping these off pretty much at ground level laying them all flat again acting as a mulch between my tomato plants [Music] my next step will be after this rots down a bit scoot it out of the way plant my basil seedlings in amongst this residue so that I will have a nice mulch in place and I'll have basil growing up between my tomato plants another option is to mix the chopped cover crop into the soil as I mentioned earlier when I want to do this I'm sure to cut my crop into smaller sections that makes it easier to incorporate and it makes it rot down more quickly into my garden soil I use a garden fork and lightly incorporate this into my beds [Music] I typically wait a couple of days for the plant residue to dry down [Music] and then I'm ready to plant my vegetable crops now you can see there's still quite a bit of cover crop residue so when I'm planting I'll just kind of rake this out of the way with my fingers make a spot of exposed soil to plant in and I'm ready to go but you can see how nice the soil is under here and I'm starting with predominantly clay in this Garden I feel like I say this about all my cover crops that they're all my favorites but this one really is probably my favorite blend and that is because all three of the components the winter Peas the hairy vetch and the oats have benefits that complement one another peas can fix nitrogen for subsequent crops legumes like peas and veg which I'll mention in a minute grow in a symbiotic relationship with soil bacteria which are housed in nodules in the legumes Roots the bacteria take nitrogen from the soil and air and essentially feed it to the legumes the legumes then provide carbohydrates to the bacteria the legumes hold this nitrogen while they are growing but after they die they release the stored nitrogen back into the soil making it available to the plants that follow now peas can also help to provide organic matter suppress weeds and their blooms help to attract beneficial insects and pollinators now oats are one of the best quick sources for lots of biomass or green matter the quick growth that they're able to put on helps to suppress weeds so basically they're growing faster and bigger than the weeds in the garden so they're out competing them they help to prevent soil erosion with their fibrous root systems and they can scavenge excess nutrients out of the soil which can actually help improve the growth of the legumes that they are planted with and veg is another excellent weed suppressant it's thick matted trailing growth habit really helps to choke out weeds in the spring it's also an excellent source of nitrogen according to Ser veg delivers a heavy contribution of mineralized nitrogen meaning that that nitrogen is readily available for the following crop so much so that it can actually help to replace some of the nitrogen fertilizer used in heavy feeding crops like corn it also attracts beneficial insects and pollinators with its beautiful purple blooms is an excellent soil Builder and offers erosion control so while I do use targeted single cover crops in some applications I do like my winter Rye I use a lot of tiller radish I love my buckwheat I do really like the way that this mix works together and offers a wide array of benefits for the garden now I've got to get back to planting but if you'd like to learn more about different cover crops and their benefits to the home Garden be sure to check out the playlist that I have linked above and subscribe to my Channel growfully with Jenna to catch more updates on home Garden cover cropping thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Growfully with Jenna

Views: 14,765

Keywords: cool season cover crop, cover crop, cover crops, green manure, soil health, improving soil, organic matter, vegetable garden, growfully with jenna, home garden cover crops, cover crops for gardens, cool season cover crops, cover crop mix, best cover crop mix, home garden cover crop, growfully, cover cropping, winter pea cover crop, oat cover crop, vetch cover crop, planting cover crops, using cover crop in the garden, home cover crop, cover crop blend, spring cover crops

Id: sDMDPPjIZ_E

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023