When most people think about gardening, they think about planting vegetables and herbs, maybe some flowers to add beauty, but a garden is a complex system that requires year-round care. Part of that is maintaining your soil to make sure it is healthy and full of the nutrients your plants need. Planting cover crops is a useful way to create healthy soil, and certain cover crops come with the added benefit of being edible.
Let’s look at some of the cover crops that Survival Garden Seeds offers. We’ll learn when to plant them, when to harvest them, and some ways you can use them to feed or care for your family as well as your garden.
Meet the Cover Crops
Cover crops are a vital part of building healthy soil. They work to suppress weeds, prevent erosion, and restore nitrogen. Our company mission has always been to support self-reliance through gardening, so we chose cover crops that can do double duty. Not only do they support healthy soil, but they are edible or useful in other ways.
Here are some of the seed types we offer and their personalities as cover crops:
- Barley - fast-growing, cold-tolerant, good weed suppressor that tolerates poor soil
- Buckwheat - quick germinating summer crop, excellent for smothering weeds, and attracting pollinators, breaks down fast
- Oats - winterkill in colder zones for easy spring cleanup, good biomass and erosion control
- Wheat - hardy, deep-rooted, good for erosion control and boosting organic matter
- Clover - nitrogen fixing legumes that serve as living mulch, great for pollinators
Where to Plant Cover Crops
Cover crops earn their keep almost anywhere soil is exposed or resting between food crops, but a few spots benefit the most. Fallow beds or unused garden rows are the obvious choice. Rather than leaving the soil bare and inviting weeds and erosion, add a cover crop to hold and build nutrients and improve soil quality until you’re ready to plant again. Areas that are prone to erosion like sloped beds or the edges of a field exposed to wind and rain do especially well with deep-rooted grains like wheat or barley to anchor the soil. Pathways between rows and beds are a great location for low-growing clover that doubles as a living mulch that suppresses weeds and tolerates foot traffic.
If you are rotating crops, plant cover crops in the beds that just finished a heavy-feeding harvest (like tomatoes or corn). This way, nitrogen-fixers like clover can replenish what was used up by those crops before the next planting. For orchards or perennial plantings, a clover understory works well between trees or shrubs by feeding the soil, attracting pollinators, and reducing the need to mow.
Essentially, anywhere your soil would otherwise sit idle or exposed is a good candidate for a cover crop.
When to Plant Cover Crops
Different cover crops are used during different seasons. Grains like barley, oats, and wheat are typically planted in the early fall as winter cover or in the early spring. Buckwheat is a warm-season crop that is planted after the danger of frost is past and grows fast enough for multiple plantings in a season. Clover can be planted in the early spring or late summer/fall depending on the variety. It is often interseeded with faster-growing grains to protect it until it is established. An easy rule to remember is: grains for fall cover, buckwheat for summer smothering, and clover for season-long nitrogen building.
When to Harvest for Food or Seed
These double-duty cover crops will be harvested at different times depending on how you want to use them. Barley, oats, and wheat can be allowed to mature and harvested as whole grains, or you can cut them earlier for hay or mulch. Buckwheat can be harvested for its groats once the seed heads brown, though many growers let it flower and till it in instead. Clover leaves and blossoms can be harvested continuously through the growing season for tea, salads, and drying, while seed harvest happens once flower heads dry on the plant.
Eating and Using the Harvest
Here are some ways you can use your cover crops.
- Barley - Barley can be cooked as a grain, added to soups and stews, malted for brewing, or juiced as a nutritional supplement.
- Buckwheat - Cook buckwheat groats like rice, grind them into flour for pancakes or soba noodles. If you have some extra buckwheat seeds, they also grow into tasty and nutritious microgreens.
- Oats - Oats are popular for porridge and can be used to create a soothing bath for skin irritation. You can make a nourishing herbal infusion from the dried oat straw (oat straw tea) that is good for calcium and magnesium support.
- Wheat - Use whole grain wheat for flour and baking. Juice fresh wheatgrass or add wheat berries to salads and grain bowls. Young wheatgrass is also a pet-friendly green treat.
- Clover - Clover blossoms and leaves can be used fresh or dried for a tea, known traditionally as a mild detoxifying/skin-supportive herb (red clover especially). Use the edible flowers as a garnish for salads, and as a natural remedy for coughs and skin conditions.
When and How to Cut Cover Crops Down for Soil Health
One of the main purposes of cover crops is as “green manure” or fertilizer to help restore nutrients to the soil. The nutrients returned will depend on when you cut down the cover crop. Generally, cover crops are cut when they are flowering or just starting to set seeds. These will break down quickly and release nitrogen into the soil fast, which is great for feeding upcoming food crops. If you are looking for longer-lasting organic mulch (much like adding straw to a garden bed), allow the crops to mature more before cutting.
There are several methods of cutting the cover crops. You can mow or scythe them, pull them out and lay them down as much, or crimp (typically done with a heavy roller that breaks the stems) if you are going with a no-till system. You want to time this about 2 to 4 weeks before you plant your main crops to allow for decomposition. Clover can be mowed multiple times through a season to keep it growing and nitrogen-rich, rather than letting it go to seed.
A Sample Planting Plan
If you are looking for an easy way to get started with cover crops, here’s a simple combination. Plant crimson clover with oats in the early fall as a winter cover. In the spring harvest some oat greens for juicing, let the clover flower for tea and bees, then cut both down together 3 weeks before planting heavy-feeding crops like tomatoes or corn.
The right cover crops are a two-for-one investment in your garden. They will feed your soil now and your family later. Browse our grains and cover crops and get started this fall. Your garden will thank you.
Please note: This article is intended for educational and informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. .
