It’s August already and if you look around you will begin to see the end is near. The poison oak is turning color as are some of the maples. Seed pods are forming and there is a certain something in the air that hints of fall and the winter to come. Does this mean your work in the garden is coming to end? No way! There is still much to do. In addition to keeping it all watered and picked and weeded, now you are planting veggies for fall and winter and saving some of those free seeds that are ripening everywhere. The next thing you may want to consider is planting a fall cover crop.

If your garden has been good to you, and especially if it hasn’t, now is a great time to start planning and ordering seed for a fall sown cover crop. Planting a cool weather cover crop is a great way to increase your soil’s organic matter and add nutrients. Organic gardeners and farmers have know for a long time that whatever ails your soil can be cured by adding organic matter, and growing a fall cover crop is a great and inexpensive way to achieve this goal. Organic matter improves the structure of your soil and gives bacteria, fungi, earthworms and all the other beneficial critters a place to live and something to eat. Organic matter helps hold water and nutrients in the soil, keeping them available for your plants to use.

The basic concept is this: you choose a cover crop or a combination of crops depending on what your garden needs, prepare the garden as you would for any other crop and then plant. In spring, just before they mature, you chop them down and till them under. In 3 to 4 weeks they will be broken down enough for you to begin planting your summer garden. The cover crop will begin releasing its nutrients and organic matter over the course of the summer for your veggies to use.

Your choice of crops includes legumes and grasses. Legumes include things like peas, clover, vetch and fava beans. Legumes are nitrogen fixing and are used to add nitrogen to the soil. Bacteria living on their roots know as rhizobium bacteria have the unique ability to take nitrogen out of the air and convert it into a form that plants can use. In exchange the plants provide sugar for the bacteria to eat. This symbiotic relationship benefits both entities.

If you choose to grow a legume be sure to buy the appropriate bacteria to inoculate it with. Inoculation with the right bacteria will optimize nitrogen fixation. When you buy your seed there should be instructions with it to tell you what kind of bacteria to use. Once the legume is up and growing you can actually see this happening. Pull up a plant every once in a while and look at the roots. You should seed small white or pinkish nodules on the roots.

Grasses are the other major cover crop category. Grasses provide huge amounts of organic matter. Their massive fibrous root systems penetrate the soil, breaking it up while they grow, and add lots of organic matter, along with their tops, when they break down.

A great combo is to use a legume and a grass together since the nitrogen from the legume helps the grass breakdown. So combos like hairy vetch and annual rye or oats, or peas with winter wheat or rye make great cover crops. Here are a few crops and the quantities to seed for a 1,000 square foot bed.

Field peas – 2 to 4 pounds per 1,000 sq ft

Fava Beans – 2 to 5 pounds per 1,000 sq ft (use small seeded varieties not varieties for eating)

Crimson Clover - ½ to 2 pounds per 1,000 sq ft

Hairy Vetch – 1 to 2 pounds per 1,000 sq ft

Oats - 2 pounds per 1,000 sq t.

Annual Rye - ½ to 2 pounds per 1,000 sq ft

Keep in mind that since we are taking something out of the garden, all the veggies you grew, we have to put something back in. Cover cropping in the fall is easy, cheap and Mother Nature does most all the watering.

You can get cover crop seeds at Mad River Gardens, A&L Feed or online at groworganic.com