Living Mulch cover crops for Pepper and Tomato Bed

I have a box that I grow my peppers and tomatoes in (tomatoes on one side peppers on other side). In between the peppers and tomatoes I grow onions in the spring then harvest by the time the peppers/tomatoes are taking off. Normally I just used thick mulch and wood chips for soil improvement but the soil is pretty healthy since all the improvements.

So I was thinking of using a living mulch which doesn't use much resources. I just want something to protect the soil and that I can dig into for the onion sets and transplants.

Has anyone tried this? As long as it doesn't cause problems with the peppers or tomatoes it seems like a good idea but I don't know how much they would compete and which types to use. "Green and Gold" looks like a good candidate but I haven't found anyone saying they used it in a garden.

Has anyone else tried a living mulch with peppers and tomatoes. Hoping it will help stop the weeds from trying to become their own living mulch, or maybe I will use some of the weeds if they are non-competitive with the important plants.

I grow some tomatoes and peppers in large pots. I started leaving the purslane to grow with them a couple years ago and now it seems to keep re-seeding itself. It gets a bit of a late start here, (end of june,) but grows, and re-grows pretty quickly once it shows up.

Generally I selectively weed, trying to encourage Creeping Charlie and broad leaf plantain, while pulling grasses, bindweed, smartweed, etc.
I've seen a lot about sowing white clover as a living mulch,but it never seems to compete in my lawn, beds or containers.
How about some sweet potatoes?
They vine and run readily.
I put some out just last month , very late in the season and they have spread quite a bit, but they don't seem to climb.

William Bronson wrote:Generally I selectively weed, trying to encourage Creeping Charlie and broad leaf plantain, while pulling grasses, bindweed, smartweed, etc.
I've seen a lot about sowing white clover as a living mulch,but it never seems to compete in my lawn, beds or containers.
How about some sweet potatoes?
They vine and run readily.
I put some out just last month , very late in the season and they have spread quite a bit, but they don't seem to climb.

Any idea which weeds are heavy vs light feeders? I've got clover and some random broad leaf ones. Be nice if the cover crop would stop other weeds and let my main crops grow but that's asking a lot.

Problem with sweet potatoes is I would have to dig them up and destroy the pepper/tomato roots. It's kinda my no till bed and every year it seems to improve in quality.

I don't know about what weeds are heavy feeders.
Sweet potatoes are long season vegetables, so you could probably wait to till after everything else to harvest them, but I would just leave them in the ground.
You can harvest the greens all growing season and let the tubers winter kill, making a nice addition to the soil.

Simon said, "So I was thinking of using a living mulch which doesn't use much resources. I just want something to protect the soil and that I can dig into for the onion sets and transplants.

I don't know if a living mulch cover crop would use more or fewer resources such as nutrients than the weeds would.

Weeds can be chopped and dropped to put the nutrients back into the soil.

If a person uses an edible cover crop that would give that person nutrients.

Spinach, lettuce, and arugula grow well with tomatoes and would offer some shade.

Enlarging something that William wrote:

How about some sweet potatoes? They vine and run readily

Pardon the cliché, but could you plant those vining sweet potatoes "outside the box?" If you have the space, consider putting those sweet potatoes in-ground at the edge of the raised bed so that the vines may travel through the bed but not be rooted in the bed.
I have a raised bed with some exposed soil so I covered it with the vines from a nearby grape plant then cut the vines if they get overgrown. Maybe those sweet potatoes could be planted in-ground next to the raised bed and the vines artfully moved into the raised bed gaps as needed. Sort of a compromise "living mulch cover crop" that takes no nutrition from the raised bed to grow, allows easy access to onion sets, and thrives on the "trickle down" nutrients (such as worm castings) from the bed runoff.

Amy Gardener wrote:Enlarging something that William wrote:

How about some sweet potatoes? They vine and run readily

Pardon the cliché, but could you plant those vining sweet potatoes "outside the box?" If you have the space, consider putting those sweet potatoes in-ground at the edge of the raised bed so that the vines may travel through the bed but not be rooted in the bed.
I have a raised bed with some exposed soil so I covered it with the vines from a nearby grape plant then cut the vines if they get overgrown. Maybe those sweet potatoes could be planted in-ground next to the raised bed and the vines artfully moved into the raised bed gaps as needed. Sort of a compromise "living mulch cover crop" that takes no nutrition from the raised bed to grow, allows easy access to onion sets, and thrives on the "trickle down" nutrients (such as worm castings) from the bed runoff.

That's a very good idea. I could probably do that in the walkways and guide the vines into the bed or use a pot and let the roots just go down a bit. I think I will try it next year! Thanks!

You guys might enjoy this new clip from our Garden Master Course looking at the benefits of a living mulch and active root system in the soil year-round.

How about the method where we let the living mulch grow and cover the area and then we put cover on it until they're withered and dry (and dead of course)? So we dont only get mulch on the top but also fertilized soil under. I saw a lot of reels of this in Insta and am wondering what kind of plants should I use for this method...

Welcome to the forum!

I like to chop and drop cover crops/weeds to do what you are suggesting.

My favorite to recommend is clover ....