A Stroll Through the Garden: All about cover crops

A few weeks ago a reader and a friend from the pool who lives near Loudonville asked me if a person could leave his cereal rye in the field this season. I said I’m not sure, but I’ll find out if that is a good thing or not.

Italian rye, which is what we also call annual rye, is temperature sensitive and should do well in producing the roots you need to break up the soil. Perennial rye is something that you could battle for many years if gone to seed. Cereal rye can be managed the following year, if you know up front it will reseed if you don’t kill it early. This cereal rye also looks like wheat.

Cover crops for home gardeners are a little different and have a lot of benefits in a number of ways. I have talked to many people about trying cover crops to improve their gardens, and people still wonder why anyone would want to grow a cover crop. My friend and expert from Centerra, Dave Plant of West Salem, said that garden cover crops are becoming more popular and there are serious benefits from using them.

Cover crops stop your soil from eroding away by rain or wind. These cover crops are grown to keep the soil in place. If you have tried to improve your soil in the past, these cover crops can increase organic matter and other nutrients. Insects and other soil life, such as earthworms and beneficial microorganisms, have a chance to grow in the soil. Beneficial fungi, bacteria and insects have a better home to help your garden. One of the strong benefits of having a cover crop is to decrease soil compaction and improve water, root and air penetration of soil. Some cover crops also provide habitat and food for beneficial insects and late season and early season pollinators.

Cover crops can help with weeds

Have you ever heard the term allelopathy? Gardeners should like this term when it comes to weeds. Allelopathy is a biological phenomenon where the roots of a plant or a particular cover crop exudes a compound that influences the germination, growth, survival and reproduction of another plant. Certain cover crops can kill weeds for you. Shading or chemical exudates or enzymes by cover crops go a long way in preparing for another season. I like that fewer chemicals are needed.

If you can sit down and make a plan for your garden now and begin to see how to improve it, then you can lay down how you are going to address the challenges that you face. In other words, begin implementing your plans in the fall. Start out by doing a good cleaning out of your garden. Remember — every weed you remove that has gone to seed may have left something for you to face in the future. When you have a good compost pile and can heat it up to 150 degrees to kill the problems, put the weeds on your pile.

I removed all perennial weeds from my beds as best as I could — ragweed, lamb’s quarters and pigweed — one year in the fall. Then I disposed of them in trash bags as I went through the beds. In the normal fall bed cleaning, you just pull everything except the seed heads, clean out the bed, turn the soil, and then plant the cover crops or mulches where the old harvested crop came out. Because of serious problems with diseases and insect pests in melons, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins and all of the cabbage family, you want to take these to the curb and dispose in the trash. If you have the ability to have an active compost pile, raising the temperatures to levels that will kill the diseases and insect eggs, you won’t have to worry about tomato and potato debris. Otherwise, you will want to include this debris in the material for the curb.

At this point I also removed all vegetable plants that had diseases or insect pest problems residing in them. Then I burned my garden with a lawn torch. By getting rid of all potential issues for my garden the previous year, the weeds, insect pests and plant diseases would be reduced for this coming year. It worked for me. Doing some basic hygienic-type cleaning not allowing things to overwinter makes things easier for you and rougher for the unwanted guests next year. Clean up your beds is my first recommendation for a good vegetable bed next year. I shall continue this topic next week.

Hope your stroll through your garden this week was a good one and that you have started to plan your fall gardening. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate in e-mailing me at [email protected]. My website is ohiohealthyfoodcooperative.org. I shall do the best I can to answer any questions you may have. Thank you for participating in our column.

Eric Larson of Jeromesville is a veteran landscaper and gardening enthusiast and a founding board member of the Ohio Chapter of Association of Professional Landscape Designers.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: A Stroll Through the Garden: How cover crops can help your garden