• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
permaculture forums growies critters building homesteading energy monies kitchen purity ungarbage community wilderness fiber arts art permaculture artisans regional education skip experiences global resources cider press projects digital market permies.com pie forums private forums all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
master stewards:
  • Carla Burke
  • Nancy Reading
  • John F Dean
  • r ranson
  • Jay Angler
  • paul wheaton
stewards:
  • Pearl Sutton
  • Leigh Tate
  • Devaka Cooray
master gardeners:
  • Christopher Weeks
  • Timothy Norton
gardeners:
  • thomas rubino
  • Matt McSpadden
  • Jeremy VanGelder

Self Sufficiency for Cover Crops

 
gardener
Posts: 5192
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205
1016
forest garden trees urban
  • Likes 11
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Most cover crops are terminated before they can set seed, lest their progeny become competitive with the next crop.
Is anyone self sufficient when it comes to cover crops, or is cover cropping reliant on commercial scale agriculture?
 
master gardener
Posts: 4454
Location: Upstate NY, Zone 5, 43 inch Avg. Rainfall
1816
monies home care dog fungi trees chicken food preservation cooking building composting homestead
  • Likes 6
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Its great to see this question come up, I have been slowly exploring the idea of perennial cover crops but haven't been able to source a whole lot of information.

I'll be following this post to see what others have come up with.
 
William Bronson
gardener
Posts: 5192
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205
1016
forest garden trees urban
  • Likes 10
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Helen Atthowe
 who was hosted here on Permies seems to be the premier practitioner of perennial cover cropping.
She has interviewed with The No Till Market Gardener podcast as well.
I highly recommend the podcast in general, they focus on making a living farming while caring for the earth, but not dogmatic about how to achieve these goals.

I guess anyone might grow perennial green manure near to but not in the field where the food crop is grown.
Even woodchips match that model.
Growing perennial cover crops directly on the land is less common.
I posted about Guatemalan Elderberry Bush Silviculture, but never found much more on the subject.
The Chinampas grows fertility in the channels between plots.
Rice paddies can grow azolla right in the "field " the rice is grown in.
 
gardener
Posts: 1828
Location: Zone 6b
1142
forest garden fungi books chicken fiber arts ungarbage
  • Likes 11
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I have several hundred square feet of typical annual garden. In the past few years, I tested several kinds of cover crops and found it tricky to do cover cropping in such a small area with heavy rotation.

The main challenges are: 1. if I allow the cover crop to generate maximum biomass, which is when it switches from vegetative to reproductive growth, plus the time required for residues to break down, I would have a much shorter season for my main crop. 2. Even with dense planting, the biomass from just several hundred sq ft of land doesn't add much to the soil, hardly offsetting the extra time, labor and potential fertility loss due to tillage.

I tried the following cover crops: winter rye, winter wheat, daikon, buckwheat, fava bean, red bush bean, common vetch and sunn hemp. I evaluated them on several parameters: seed cost, growth rate, hardiness,time of maturity, termination method, decomposition rate, nitrogen fixation ability and choice of precedding and succeeding crops. Some turned out to be hard to fit in the planting schedules.

A few cover crop/main crop combinations are successful so I am going to keep them.
1. Fall planted garlic/ potato harvested in June and followed by sorghum/sunn hemp that frost killed. The biomass provides mulching materials for next garlic and potato crop.
2. Common vetch terminated in late April (last frost) followed by regular summer crops.
3. Undersowing daikon radish/bokchoi in late July/early Aug with summer crops for fall and winter ground cover

Comparing to growing fertility on site within the garden, I find it's easier to grow it outside of the dedicated garden, making use of small awkward spots (ghost acre). It's not interfering within the timing of main crop and the sum of these area is much bigger than the annual garden.




IMG_20240508_091137.jpg
One of the sunchoke patches for biomass.
One of the sunchoke patches for biomass.
 
May Lotito
gardener
Posts: 1828
Location: Zone 6b
1142
forest garden fungi books chicken fiber arts ungarbage
  • Likes 13
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
The choice and timing of cover crops are highly specific to your location. Here in my zone 6 with frost free days from late April to late October, I roughly have the above mentioned cover crops growing (till flowering or frost and freeze kill) like in this diagram. I use it to visualize how they fit with other crops time wise.
IMG_20240508_130631.jpg
Cover crop growing and terminating schedule
Cover crop growing and terminating schedule
 
author & steward
Posts: 7186
Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.
3378
  • Likes 19
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
My weeds end up being a self-regenerating, multi-species, all-seasons cover crop.
 
pollinator
Posts: 681
Location: SE Indiana
394
dog fish trees writing
  • Likes 11
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I commonly plant things like radish for cover and soil improvement but my most used cover crops are also weeds. Primarily creeping charlie, also called henbit and purslane. Creeping Charlie is ever present but grows best in cool fall and spring and in warm spells over winter. If a bed is left open at end of season it completely blankets it by spring. It pulls or rakes out very easily when time to plant and naturally dies back a lot in warmer weather.  It blooms very early, and honeybees love it. It also makes great mulch. In summer purslane often takes over the ground in the paths and under my crops with no noticeable ill effects. Dandelions, dock, clary sage and even thistles do their part to occupy any temporarily unused ground mining trace minerals with their deep roots and providing good mulching material. Violets and white clover are allowed but I keep more on top of them because they are much harder to remove if well established.  Wild daises, wild asters, dames rocket, and a few other things are also allowed freedom over a grow bed once in a while.
 
Joseph Lofthouse
author & steward
Posts: 7186
Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.
3378
  • Likes 9
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
In places where I grow squash or corn, little bindweed comes up the next year.

 
gardener
Posts: 5485
Location: Southern Illinois
1507
transportation cat dog fungi trees building writing rocket stoves woodworking
  • Likes 9
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
William, I once saw a hand-sized harvester-thresher.  It had a set of clippers on the front, directly ahead of the opening that was attached to a vacuum.  The seed heads were sucked into the little hand unit and then thrashed about by the fan and the chaff blew out the back and the seed dropped into a little bag.  This would be great for garden sized plots of wheat and would probably work for a variety of grains, many of which might be useful as cover crops.

I don't know if this is what you are thinking, but I thought this was a cool idea when I saw it and it might be perfect for your intent.


Eric
 
William Bronson
gardener
Posts: 5192
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205
1016
forest garden trees urban
  • Likes 5
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I love creeping Charlie, but it isn't  competitive enough for where I live.
Neither is clover.
I preferentially weed for the one and have attempted to establish the other,but to no avail.
I am currently focused on deeply muched raised beds.
Kind of a Back to Eden with autum leaves and less bending.
I grow comfrey around the lower edges of the beds, to catch and retain nutrients.

I am currious on how to grow on a bigger scale, without importing anything, even seeds.
Cover cropping,as practiced now,
usually uses a lot of imported seeds.

Cover cropping is different depending on the context.
If you are trying to avoid weeding and tilling, weeds, with their persistent habits, might not work.

Mark and Joseph, how do you use tillage and how do you approach weeding?

 
Mark Reed
pollinator
Posts: 681
Location: SE Indiana
394
dog fish trees writing
  • Likes 8
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

William Bronson wrote:I love creeping Charlie, but it isn't competitive enough for where I live. Neither is clover. I preferentially weed for the one and have attempted to establish the other,but to no avail. I am currently focused on deeply muched raised beds.
Kind of a Back to Eden with autum leaves and less bending. I grow comfrey around the lower edges of the beds, to catch and retain nutrients.



Interesting that creeping charlie and clover aren't competitive for you since we are about the exact same climate, Price Hill is only about a forty-minute drive from my house. In my front garden that I've been improving for about thirty years, I have to be careful not to pull up too much of my creeping charlie. With how it makes long runners with shallow roots one tug brings up the whole mess of it. In the back garden the runners break so there is always some left. I've actually transplanted it back into the front garden. Clover is different, if it gets a foot hold in either garden it makes thick solid masses that I can't pull up, I have to get the shovel to remove it. In the yard I'm careful not to mow it while it's in bloom or maturing seed.

William Bronson wrote:
I am currious on how to grow on a bigger scale, without importing anything, even seeds. Cover cropping,as practiced now, usually uses a lot of imported seeds.



I don't give much thought to doing things on a bigger scale. Everything I do is with hand tools. The only way to scale that up might just be if more people did it on an individual level.  

William Bronson wrote:
Cover cropping is different depending on the context.
If you are trying to avoid weeding and tilling, weeds, with their persistent habits, might not work.

Mark and Joseph, how do you use tillage and how do you approach weeding?



I just pull weeds up by hand or shave them to ground level with a sharp hoe or smother them with something like other pulled weeds or crowd them out with vegetable plants.  When it comes to degrading vegetable production the only really bad weed I have is perennial grass. All the others are pretty easy to control, and I think in the long run do more good than harm. If I see grass in my garden, I dig it out with a hand trowel.

*Not everything I use in my garden comes from inside the garden fence. I have plenty of weeds, grass clippings, tree leaves and other stuff like that from the yard and woods. I haul it over as needed in my two-wheel hand cart.
 
May Lotito
gardener
Posts: 1828
Location: Zone 6b
1142
forest garden fungi books chicken fiber arts ungarbage
  • Likes 4
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
In my understanding, cover crops utilize the land before and after the main crops, harvesting energy from sunlight which otherwise is wasted. All plants absorb CO2, but legumes are better, bringing net increase in Nitrogen. Of the legumes to fill the gap in the colder part of growing season, small seeded ones are much cheaper. It's also easy to collect your own seeds and be self sufficient afterwards. Broadbeans are more expensive. I started with a seed pack of $5 and there was only 24 seeds inside!

Wheat is $16/40# and rye is $21/40# locally. I buy them predominantly for sprouts as winter chicken feed. I am quite disappointed with buckwheat. It is very frost sensitive and bolts quickly in spring. It is nice to be a pollinators plant than cover crop.
 
steward and tree herder
Posts: 8654
Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
4084
4
transportation dog forest garden foraging trees books food preservation woodworking wood heat rocket stoves ungarbage
  • Likes 4
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

May Lotito wrote:Broadbeans are more expensive. I started with a seed pack of $5 and there was only 24 seeds inside!


If you can get hold of field beans these would be more economic. in the UK you can buy them as a green manure seed. Just like broad beans, but with more pods and smaller seeds.

From this UK company they have 250g (about 8oz) for £2.95, the more you buy the better the rate though.

Generally to be self sufficient, you would need to leave some of whatever you choose to grow to seed, so would need even more area devoted to growing manure crops I suppose.

I love the idea of a hand held combine....I wonder if I can find a thread on that!
 
William Bronson
gardener
Posts: 5192
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205
1016
forest garden trees urban
  • Likes 8
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
What legumes make the most seed pet plant?
If you have cover crop of legumes and leave 5 percent of them alive to create seed, wpuld that be enough?

Legumes are about a dollar a pound so the cost of the cover crops isn't really an issue for me.

I was inspired to consider this question by this No Till Farmers podcast:
Berea, KY | Salamander Springs Farm
https://salamandersprings.wixsite.com/farm/about

This farmer broadcasts sows corn and beans into cover crops.
She tows aheavy board across the bed to terminate.
This is an off grid market farm .
That's a lot if resilience!
I belive she still imports cover crop seed, which is why I'm wondering if that  loop can also be closed .


 
gardener & hugelmaster
Posts: 3708
Location: Gulf of Mexico cajun zone 8
1981
cattle hugelkultur cat dog trees hunting chicken bee woodworking homestead ungarbage
  • Likes 8
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I prefer "cover crops" that are edible.

I've grown a lot of buckwheat. More for the bees & pancakes & soil improvement rather than as a cover crop. It grows fast & reseeds itself easily. Roughly 6 weeks from initial planting to seeds starting to fall on their own. It can also be grown very thick, Here in the deep south I get multiple crops per year. Seed collection is relatively easy. I really don't think it is a great cover crop here because it's a fairly short plant with thin stems & small leaves. We have some rowdy weeds that can easily outgrow & smother it. Maybe if the same spot was tended for buckwheat only for several years in a row it might minimize the weeds. I also don't think it would provide good ground cover an entire winter because they are fragile plants & break down fairly fast.

Although they're not generally considered cover crops I think blackeyed peas & peanuts are a good choice in suitable soils & climates. Blackeyed peas grow fast & reseeds itself fairly well. They are large plants with lots of biomass. Also easy enough to harvest, or just leave them on the plants if you want them come back on their own the following year. They die off in late fall & will cover the soil until spring. I simply chop them in fall & mow their area in spring when ready to plant other crops there. I have noticed that mice & snakes like to live in thick piles of the dead or mowed plants so proceed with caution.

Peanuts planted thick also do fairly well as cover crops. The plants are not nearly as large as blackeyed peas though. The will grow back the following year if left in the ground but I don't think the leaves would provide much ground cover for an entire winter.

All of these are fairly easy to grow & harvest. They make many more seeds than they started with. Peanuts are the hardest because of the digging required but it's doesn't require expensive special machinery.
 
pollinator
Posts: 978
Location: Greybull WY north central WY zone 4 bordering on 3
287
hugelkultur trees solar woodworking composting homestead
  • Likes 9
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
This year's experiement #1 is with very early spring sown daikon radishes.  I actually germinated them indoors in a paper towel in early to mid april and then planted the seed that grew as small bare root plants at just past the first true leaf size.  Created little mulch pockets around each one a tiny bit of shelter with total sunlight.  Took a bit of frost damage to edges of leaves but didn't seem to kill any.  The reason for doing spring sowing is because supposedly when it gets hot they will bolt so hopefully I can grow seeds with the spring sowing with the intention to only harvest seed while leaving the radish undisturbed to rot and build soil,  Will see how it works.  The other thing growing in this location is the Bocking 4 comfrey.   The hope is I can build deep soil in this location combining both of these and at the bottom edge the plug/dam that holds the water in this area is a long term compost pile.

#2  I have a micro dutch clover that I am hoping I can harvest seed from when it matures.  It was too pricey to do at the scale I want to do it.  The beginning goal is to plant a patch to simply be a seed source into the future.  Will see how that goes.  Still  need to get the biochar inocculated for this area and then get it worked in.

I have and will put both patches at gutter downspout outlets in hopes that I can get them to no care mostly.  The goal is to create patches of ground that really hold water and produce the seed for my other projects.

I am no where near self sufficiency but hopefully moving that way.  
 
Posts: 44
Location: Southwestern Ohio, Zone 6b
23
forest garden seed composting
  • Likes 8
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
One year I used store bought lentils and a bunch of saved Siberian kale seed on a small bed that I wanted to prep for wildflowers in my "meadow". The lentils were winter killed easily. The kale overwintered and it was easy to lift out the plants that I didn't want in the beds. Now I have a few perennial kale that keep on keeping on. The deer don't mind, and the other wildflowers that they are sharing the space with don't either. This was on a very small scale. Beds were three feet by six feet. I didn't see any production of lentil seed, so not self sufficient. Fortunately, a bag of lentils at the store is very affordable. I am sure other legumes would be successful as well. It is amazing how viable seeds are in bulk packaged dry goods.

Last year I used a purchased cover crop mix in a couple of my annual beds in the garden. I ended up trimming the overwintered wheat and clover to the ground in early spring. I kept the kale and have been harvesting them as I prepare for other crops in the beds. The other plants winter killed for the most part. The beds are four by eight or so. Not a large area to manage.

I over wintered annuals in other beds with fleece covers during the worst frost. I am in 6b and last winter was more mild than it could have been. I had a pile of beet greens, red sorrel, and a variety of Chinese greens in early spring. Not a large area, but it was cool to have the fresh produce out of the garden by early April. The beets weren't good as roots, though the greens made up for it.
 
Mark Reed
pollinator
Posts: 681
Location: SE Indiana
394
dog fish trees writing
  • Likes 4
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I don't know that I think of them as cover crops, but I love cowpeas and peanuts. They don't reseed or grow back in my climate, but I think they are excellent soil improvement crops. I grow small bushy varieties of cowpeas. Sometimes I will plant an early crop in widely spaced rows and when the pods are about to mature, I plant corn between the rows. When the peas are harvested the plants are left to be shaded out by the corn, so I guess in a way they are a cover crop of sorts or maybe more of a mulch.

Even the shorter maturity types of peanuts take the whole season in my climate, and they get quite large and bushy. I have never seen anything to rival peanuts in the amount and size of nitrogen nodules I find on the roots. In my front garden I can just pull up the entire plant to harvest. I generally plant corn or squash the following year after peanuts.

I think as others have mentioned, a more traditional definition of cover crop is something, maybe not even a food crop that is planted to protect and improve soil in the time between crops. I don't really do much of that, since the weeds do most of that for me. Some of my weeds though are radishes, turnips, mustard and various cabbage family brassica, all of which provide me with plenty of self-sufficient seed and reseed themselves, if I let them.
 
William Bronson
gardener
Posts: 5192
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205
1016
forest garden trees urban
  • Likes 3
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
C. Letellier, I like what you are doing with the radishes.
The pods are tasty, like a spicy snow pea pod.
I've had them self sow in my yards, I was hoping they would become and remain naturalized but they petered out.

 
William Bronson
gardener
Posts: 5192
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205
1016
forest garden trees urban
  • Likes 2
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I am adding siberian pea shrub cuttings to each raised bed.
They seem to be taking.
The idea is to have a support stake, nitrogen fixation, biomass creation and living roots.
If I were further south , I would use pigeon peas, but they don't over winter here.
I am wanting to add prairie mimosa to to the base of each bed, alongside the comfrey.

One  of my pathways has alfalfa growing up through the mulch.
I like this, but it does make bindweed harder to spot.

This spring I grew peas under cloches as a green manure for my peppers and  tomatoes.
Very cheap, the effects are still to be determined.
I planted some lima beans for the same reason, but i put them in deep, which didn't work at all.
I will try surface sowing them in the fall.
They are said to grow in away not unlike fava beans.

'
This year is my first year trying to grow runner beans.
If they can perennialize, they might work in similar way that velvet beans do in South American growing systems.
A perennial or self sowing  nitrogen fixer that won't overwhelm the crops planted over it is close to ideal.

20240510_182827.jpg
The black milkcrates are the beds, the brown is leaf mulch and most of the green is comfrey or alfalfa.
The black milkcrates are the beds, the brown is leaf mulch and most of the green is comfrey or alfalfa.
 
I like my tiny ads with a little salt
The Intentional Community Summit - Feb 21-23 (2025) - online
https://permies.com/t/273995/Intentional-Community-Summit-Feb-online
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic