BELMONT, N.Y. — Late summer is an ideal time to use cover crops in your garden. They can do for your garden what they do for farmers’ fields: suppress weeds, improve soil, build organic matter, and control erosion. Once the summer’s heat loving crops are done and you’ve pulled the plants, you can protect your soil for the winter by planting a cover crop. Cover crops that die when it gets cold enough means less work for you in the spring. A winter-killed cover crop can be your stand-in guardian of the soil when you are unable to get into the garden because of wet spring weather.
Darlene Krisher-Meehan, Owner/Operator of Country Crossroads Feed and Seed in Andover recommends oats for a fall planting when the weather has already cooled. Oats will grow well in cooler, wetter weather until it gets killed by hard frost. You can just let it lay over your soil to protect it through the winter. If you use no-till then rake off the dried stalks in the spring when you’re ready to plant and if you turn your soil yearly (which is hard on the soil and soil organisms) you can leave the dead stalks and turn them under to decompose. Oats also will scavenge nutrients from the soil, utilizing them to build the plant as it grows, then releasing them back to the soil as it decomposes, while reducing loss from erosion.
Annual rye grass is another fall-planted solution for winter soil protection – it will die with hard frost and hold the soil in place. Annual rye behaves very differently from what’s commonly called “winter rye”, or cereal rye, which is another robust cover crop. Winter rye can be planted in soils as cool as 40 degrees. Although it dies back in the winter, it regrows in the spring, which will make a nice green cover early in the season and build lots of organic matter through its massive root system. Be aware, however, that you will need to either pull or till in the plants at about 6” tall so it doesn’t get ahead of your planting schedule. Because of winter rye’s allelopathic (seed germination and growth-inhibiting) effects it’s best to allow the organic matter to decompose for 2-3 weeks before planting vegetables, so plan accordingly.
Questions about cover crops? Ask a Master Gardener Volunteer! Contact us at: (585) 268-7644 Ext. 23.
—Deb Bigelow, Master Gardener Volunteer
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Allegany County
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