Cover Crops in the Home Garden - Ep. 318

[00:00:00] Right now is the time of year when you might be starting to pull, say, unproductive tomato vines out of your raised beds. Root ball, steaks, the whole tangled mess of it, right? And underneath there, you might be looking at pale, just kind of tired-looking soil because it just spent the last five full months feeding a plant without a break.

[00:00:22] At this point, you basically have three choices. Either leave that soil bare and let the fall rains crusted over and the winter winds dry it out. Not a good option, right? You could add some compost and throw a heavy layer of mulch on top to put the bed to bed for the winter, and I'm using air bunnies there. That's not a bad option.

[00:00:44] Or you could just hand-broadcast a couple of ounces of seed over top of that and let something else do the work of protecting that soil while you're busy with everything else on your fall list.

[00:00:55] An empty garden bed is not necessarily a resting garden bed. If it's not growing something that you planted, it could be growing weeds or losing nitrogen to the fall rains or getting compacted by every hard freeze and thaw between now and spring. Cover crops are the tool that solves all of those problems, and they do it for the cost of a seed packet and about 20 minutes of your time.

[00:01:25] Welcome back to Just Grow Something. I'm Karin Velez, market farmer and horticulturist, and I host this podcast to share my experiences and to help translate university extension research and peer-reviewed science into practical guidance that you can use in your own home garden. Today we are talking cover crops, what they do for your soil, whether that changes if you're growing in raised beds or in ground rows, which ones should earn a spot in your fall rotation and which ones should wait until spring,

[00:01:55] and how to bring a cover crop to an end when it's time to plant the garden without turning it into a weed problem itself. Let's dig in. So before we jump into cover crops, I got a really great message from Shelly, a gardener that lives locally to me here in West Central Missouri, after the onion episode last week.

[00:02:22] And she asked why nobody talks about Egyptian walking onions. So Shelly said that she had bought some last year and planted them and basically ignored them all season. And she just went in to clean them up and she harvested over 400 little onions from her patch. Now, if you're not familiar with Egyptian walking onions, they are a perennial.

[00:02:46] So rather than growing seeds at the top of the plant, they grow bulbils, like what we would see in a garlic scape. The bulbils weigh down the top of the plant and then the stalk bends over from that weight. So then it touches the ground, it roots there, and it sprouts new plants. So that means that they sort of spread like every two feet or so every season.

[00:03:11] And they create these really dense clumps over time, but they're super easy to control just by harvesting the whole plant. Or you can leave them to spread and you can just harvest what you need when you need it. So those top sets are edible. They're slightly stronger than shallots, but maybe not quite as strong as like a regular white onion.

[00:03:35] The greens are edible like chives or young green onions and the underground bulbs are edible. They are more similar to shallots, I'd say, and they are small, which is why I told Shelly I think they're not talked about more. The bulbs don't generally get much bigger than like an inch or two in diameter. So not as convenient in the conventional sense for cooking. But if you don't need a ton of onion at a time, then maybe they're a good alternative.

[00:04:05] They're also not day length dependent. And they're also pretty tolerant of most soil types. I actually had someone give me a bag of Egyptian walking onions one time and I put them in my greenhouse until I could get around to planting them. And I totally failed to get them in the ground and I still feel really guilty about that. But now I really do need to go get some and plant them because I do think they're super useful.

[00:04:34] I do think that you could force the bulbs to get a little bit bigger underground by cutting those top sets off, just like you would the scape on a garlic, which is something else that Shelly mentioned that she might try to do. And I think that they would make a good companion plant in the garden, especially since they propagate on their own. So thank you, Shelly, for reaching out and reminding me about Egyptian walking onions. And now everyone has another option for onions in their garden.

[00:05:04] Okay, cover crops. They're sometimes called green manures and they are plants that you grow specifically to protect and improve the soil rather than to harvest. You sow them, you let them grow for a while, and then you terminate them either by cutting them down, tilling them in or letting winter finish the job. The value is almost entirely in what happens while they're alive and in what they leave behind once they're gone.

[00:05:34] So let's walk through what the value actually is because the mechanisms matter for choosing the right crop. The first benefit would be erosion control and rainfall protection. Bare soil takes a beating from the rain. Every raindrop that hits exposed dirt breaks apart soil aggregates at the surface, and that broken down material seals over the top of the soil like a crust.

[00:06:02] Once that crust forms, water's soaking in or it stops soaking in, and it starts running off instead. And that takes the topsoil with it. A cover crop canopy intercepts that rainfall before it ever reaches the bare soil, and the root system underneath holds what's there in place. Now, this is the benefit that matters most for in-ground gardens, especially if you are gardening on any kind of a slope.

[00:06:30] Now, if you're gardening in raised beds, then this particular benefit probably isn't as important for you because the wooden or the metal sides of whatever bed you're using are already doing a lot of that erosion control work. It doesn't mean cover crops aren't worth it in a raised bed. It just means they're good for a different reason. Another reason cover crops are beneficial is for feeding soil biology and building organic matter.

[00:06:56] So, regardless of if you're in in-ground or raised beds, this is where cover crops really earn their keep. Living roots feed soil microbes with the sugars that they exude as they grow. And that keeps your soil food web active during the months that your harvestable crops are not in the ground. So, when you terminate the cover crop and its tissue starts to break down, that biomass becomes organic matter.

[00:07:23] And organic matter is what gives the soil the ability to hold water, hold nutrients, and resist compaction. Raised beds and containers actually depend on this a lot more than in-ground gardens do. Most raised bed mixes start out nice, you know, and light and well-drained.

[00:07:45] But they also start out biologically inactive or very, very thin compared to native topsoil that has had, you know, a long time to kind of build a soil food web up. A cover crop is one of the cheapest ways to keep feeding that biology year after year instead of relying entirely on buying compost and adding it back into your raised beds.

[00:08:12] And it helps keep the texture in our raised beds from compressing and collapsing over time. Another benefit is nitrogen. And this happens in two ways. So, if we're using legume cover crops, okay, things like clover, vetch, or field peas, they host a bacteria called rhizobia in nodules on their roots. We have talked about this a little bit before in terms of growing legumes in our garden.

[00:08:39] That partnership between the bacteria and the roots lets the plant pull nitrogen straight out of the air, essentially, and it converts it into a form that the plant can use. And when the plant dies and it decomposes, a good share of that nitrogen that's left behind becomes available to whatever you plant next.

[00:09:02] That's why it is so important when we're using legumes in the garden, whether it's an intentional cover crop or it's an edible crop, that we leave the root system in the soil after the plant is done. Those roots are going to release that nitrogen after the top of the plant is no longer using it. Grasses, like winter rye and wheat and oats, work differently from the legumes.

[00:09:26] They don't fix nitrogen, but their root systems scavenge nutrients that would otherwise leach out of the soil during the fall and winter rain. And this is specifically, nitrogen is specifically susceptible to this. When the grass decomposes, that scavenged nitrogen and the other nutrients gets released back into the system on a slower timeline.

[00:09:51] This is why planting a grass and a legume together is a really good cover crop combo. The grass holds on to what's already there while the legume adds more to it. Cover crops are also really good at breaking up compaction. Now, raised beds don't usually have a compaction problem per se, the way that like in-ground beds do, specifically clay soils.

[00:10:16] That's especially because we build that bed, that raised bed with loose materials to begin with usually. But it does sort of shrink and settle. In-ground beds are a little bit of a different story, which is why cover crops that have really aggressive tap roots, things like daikon radish, can punch through compacted layers that a garden fork might not be able to get into very well.

[00:10:40] When that root eventually decomposes, it leaves a channel behind that improves the water infiltration, and it gives the next crop's roots an easier path down into the soil. Plus, it's adding biomass for the microbes to feed on at the same time. We have had really great success with daikon radish in our very heavy clay soils here. Another benefit of cover crops is weed suppression.

[00:11:05] A dense cover crop competes with weeds for light and water and space, and it does it during the window when your beds would otherwise just sit open and unused, and looking very inviting to whatever weed seed happens to be blowing by, unless you're really vigilant about getting a thick mulch layer down right away after your final harvest and your bed cleanup is done.

[00:11:32] Some cover crops, cereal rye specifically, also release natural compounds into the soil that suppress germination in other plants. That's allelopathy. We've talked about that before in different plants. In this case, that's useful against the weeds. Now, this is also a reason to time your planting carefully after rye, though, because it doesn't know the difference between a weed seed and a carrot seed, so you kind of have to watch the timing on that one just a little bit.

[00:12:01] And then the final benefit for cover crops would be pollinator and beneficial insect habitat. Cover crops that flower before you terminate them, so things like crimson clover, provide a nectar and a pollen source during a time when very little else in the vegetable garden is blooming. That draws in pollinators, but it also draws in the predatory and parasitic insects that keep your pest populations in check the rest of the season.

[00:12:31] So here's where that leaves us on the kind of in-ground versus raised bed question. If you're gardening in the ground, cover crops are pulling erosion control, compaction relief, weed suppression, and nutrient scavenging all at the same time. If you're gardening in raised beds or containers, the erosion piece mostly drops out, but organic matter building, nitrogen contribution, biology support, and weed suppression are all still fully in play.

[00:13:00] And honestly, given how quickly raised bed mixes can become biologically depleted, I would argue that those benefits matter even more than they do for in-ground beds. Either way, the question isn't whether cover crops are worth using. It's which ones to use and when. As someone who has gardened and farmed in a sustainable manner for over 20 years, it is super important to me that we're considering both our environmental impact of our actions

[00:13:30] and also our human one. Making sure the people who grow and process our foods get a fair wage for their efforts is another way we make sure our food supply is sustainable. I mean, I want to be paid fairly for the work that I put into growing what I do, and I feel like even my coffee should be the same. The coffees at Larry's Coffee are certified organic and shade-grown, checking off my boxes for sustainably grown. They're also fair trade certified, meaning the humans behind the coffee, no matter where they're grown, are paid fairly for the work they're doing.

[00:14:00] I switched from drinking cream and sugar in my coffee about five years ago, and that means my coffee has to actually be good in order to enjoy the half a pot I start my day with. Larry's Coffee checks that box too, and I've tried four blends so far, and I'm now working on my fifth, so that's saying something. Support the podcast and get your sustainably grown human-supporting cup of Larry's by going to larryscoffee.com slash justgrow. As a listener of the show, you'll get a free gift with your first order,

[00:14:28] and right now that's a pair of handmade grass coasters from their fair trade artisan partners in Guatemala. larryscoffee.com slash justgrow. Support coffee growers, support your coffee habit and mine, and this podcast, larryscoffee.com slash justgrow. No codes needed. So in my way of looking at things,

[00:14:56] fall is really the sort of workhorse season for cover cropping. Most of your vegetable beds are emptying out between the late summer and mid to late fall, and that window lines up perfectly with the planting dates for the most reliable cover crop species. The ideal sowing period for fall cover crops is somewhere around mid-August through early to late October in most areas of the U.S.

[00:15:24] Here in Missouri, if you look at the University of Missouri Extension, they look at around mid to late September for the fastest growing options. There's a little more flexibility for the truly cold hardy species, so if you're running behind or if you have a crop that's not scheduled to come out until after the first frost of the year, then you do still have options, though. I just actually had this conversation with a flower farmer near us not that long ago

[00:15:53] who has to keep her flowers going until that first frost happens but still wants to work in cover crops, and we discussed what her best options were. So let's go through the options for you. The first one is winter rye or cereal rye. If I had to recommend one fall cover crop to someone who is trying this whole thing for the very first time, who really wants maximum reliability, then it would be winter rye. It is the most cold hardy of the small grains.

[00:16:21] It tolerates conditions that would kill something like oats outright, for example, and it can be sown later into the fall than almost anything else and still establish before it goes dormant. Its root system is extensive enough to break up dense clay, which makes it a good match for gardeners who are dealing with compaction. The trade-off is that rye can become difficult to manage if you let it grow too long in the spring.

[00:16:49] It produces a very tough, fibrous root mass. So if you let it go past late May, it might be difficult to terminate. So make sure that you plan on cutting this back before it gets away from you. Another really good one that's kind of a runner-up, I think, to rye is winter wheat. It gives you a lot of the same benefits as rye. So the same like deep root system and the compaction relief and the cold hardiness,

[00:17:17] but it is not quite as aggressive in its growth habit in the spring. So that makes it a nice option if you like what rye offers, but you want something that's maybe just a little bit more forgiving come termination time. Oats are the one that I would point to if you're nervous about trying a cover crop and you're worried about it becoming weedy because they solve their own termination problem for you. They're not winter hardy.

[00:17:46] Okay, so a hard freeze is going to kill them outright, and it's going to leave behind a decomposing mat of biomass on the soil surface that acts like a mulch just automatically. And so by spring, you can just rake aside whatever is left and just plant straight into it. You don't have to mow. You don't have to till. You don't have to crimp anything down. This is traditionally a great cover crop to plant in between plants in a strawberry bed

[00:18:13] because it naturally provides mulch cover right when the timing is right for those strawberry plants to go dormant. And the tradeoff is that with oats, you get one season of protection and organic matter contribution rather than like an extended growth that a winter hardy species would give you.

[00:18:36] But for anyone who wants to try cover cropping without committing to having one more thing on your to-do list in the spring, then oats are probably the lowest friction entry point. Crimson clover is probably the one in the legume family that most gardeners fall in love with when they start working with cover crops. Beyond the nitrogen contribution, because it is a legume,

[00:19:03] crimson clover produces a really lovely display of these deep red flower spikes in the spring, and the pollinators love it. It's sort of winter hardy depending on your zone. So in colder pockets, it may not survive the winter, but where it does overwinter, it's going to give you both a nitrogen boost and that really great pollinator attraction come springtime.

[00:19:29] Hairy vetch, however, is like the nitrogen powerhouse, right? It is genuinely one of the best legume options available because it tolerates winter conditions that would actually take out crimson clover. The catch is that it establishes really slowly in the fall, so you have to get in fairly early, and it can become weedy if you let it go to sea. So the best practice is to till it under as soon as it blooms

[00:19:58] before it has had a chance to kind of ripen that seed. Vetch is frequently paired with winter rye, since the vetch can climb the rye stems for support, and then the two together kind of give you your nitrogen fixation and the nitrogen scavenging in the same bed. Now if compaction is your specific problem, forage radish or daikon radish or tillage radish, whatever you want to call it, that that is worth the conversation.

[00:20:27] This is a type of daikon radish that is grown specifically for its root, not for eating, although the roots and the greens are technically edible and they are often used for livestock. That's why it's called a forage radish. We did this with our pigs before. We planted daikon in a field to break up the compaction and then we let the pigs loose in there to eat the green tops. And then we pulled the pigs back off of that field after the greens were gone and we allowed the roots to decompose in the soil. With forage radishes,

[00:20:55] the tap root can push about six inches or more straight down through compacted soil, which is why it worked really well with our clay. And it winter kills. So if you don't have an animal that you're foraging across the top of it, you've got that channel that gets left open and then you have a mat of decomposing greens that's on the surface. Now, one thing to watch for though with forage radish is because it's a brassica,

[00:21:22] it can host the same pests that go after broccoli and cabbage. So if you have trouble with like harlequin bug or something, you know, might not want to grow forage radish as a cover crop anywhere near where you plan on growing brassicas the next season. And then our final fall option is annual ryegrass. Now, this is different than winter rye and it is kind of popular. It's a very reliable grass for a garden cover crop

[00:21:52] because it establishes really quickly. It does a great job at outcompeting the weeds and it has a root system that builds soil structure really quickly. This is typically seeded in around mid to late September. It isn't as cold hardy as winter rye. So, you know, if a planting gets delayed into cooler weather, then you could consider switching to winter rye since it does tolerate the cold conditions better and it can keep growing through winter in many places, although it would be growing very slowly.

[00:22:20] A quick note on mixing all these species though. Combining a grass and a legume, so rye and crimson clover or wheat and hairy vetch, this gives you nutrient scavenging and nitrogen fixation in the same bed, which is usually a better outcome than just planting one by themselves, right? In many cases, you're going to find cover crop seeds already blended for you

[00:22:49] based on what your goals are for your garden. So as you start to experiment with this, take a look at the Johnny's Seed website or True Leaf Market and find blends that are specific to your goals. Those are the two places that I have routinely gotten my cover crop seeds in the past with really great success. I will leave a link to those in the show notes, but you can usually look at what the package contains and it will usually tell you,

[00:23:16] hey, this is good for, you know, these specific goals. And it makes it really easy when you're just getting started with this. Now, spring cover cropping serves a different purpose than fall in most instances. You're usually not protecting soil through a long, dormant season. You're filling a shorter gap, maybe the six or seven weeks between, like when your spring lettuce and your peas come out and where your tomatoes and your peppers go in,

[00:23:43] or the space in a brand new bed that isn't ready for a full planting yet. But those types of situations call for fast growers that can do their job and get out of the way. I also use one crop in particular in the midsummer when I have a gap. I'm not going to deep dive into the spring planted ones today, but I wanted to list the ones that I would reserve for spring or summer so that you know we're not planting those now and you can plan a little bit for those later. I'll do a full spring cover crop episode

[00:24:13] when it's closer to time to order those seeds. The first one is buckwheat though. And buckwheat is the standout for spring and summer. It germinates in like three to five days. Its weed suppression value peaks at around 35 to 40 days after seeding, which is super fast, which means this is the one that I tuck in in the midsummer time if I need something to fill the gap. But it isn't frost tolerant. So buckwheat is strictly a warm season tool.

[00:24:41] Another one is an oat and field peas combination. This gives you a quick growing grass and a legume together. These can be used as a fall planting if you want to, but they are both killed by a hard freeze. So fine if you're using them as like a late planting and you don't want to have to terminate something later, but you can plant these in the spring and then you can terminate them on whatever your schedule is sometime in the mid season.

[00:25:08] This combo forms a really nice, dense, living mulch across the bed within just a few weeks. The common thread with buckwheat and like the oats and peas combo is speed. You're not looking for a deep taproot or like the months of steady root growth that make winter rye or hairy vetch so valuable in the fall. With the spring stuff, you're looking for something that gets a canopy up fast, it does its job and then boom, it's done.

[00:25:36] That's why we choose those for in the spring. Now, if you've got a bed that's genuinely going to sit open for the entire summer, so maybe you're building a new garden area and it's just not ready for a full planting next year, planting cowpea and soybean together in the spring is a full season option. That combo tolerates the summer heat,

[00:26:03] it establishes really quickly and it competes well with weeds the whole time that they're growing. So that one is a fit for like a whole season dedicated to building up the soil. And then there is Dutch white clover. Dutch white clover is a slower, more lower growing option.

[00:26:25] And a lot of gardeners will use this as a long-term living mulch between wider spaced crops like tomatoes or squash rather than using it as like a full bed cover crop that you would terminate after a few weeks. We have one area or one field in particular that for many, many years, we had the Dutch white clover growing in between our permanent beds.

[00:26:49] It tolerates some foot traffic, it fixes nitrogen the whole time it's growing, and it can be mowed periodically instead of just terminating it outright if you want to keep it in place season after season. It can tend to spread if you don't keep it under control. So this is a different strategy than the other ones that I mentioned in this episode. And it's less about a defined like start and end date and more about having a permanent living ground cover.

[00:27:18] But it's worth knowing about if you're interested in that approach. So let's talk about managing and terminating your cover crop. This is the part that trips people up. And it's the reason that I hear from gardeners who've tried cover crops once and then swore them off completely.

[00:27:39] A cover crop that isn't terminated correctly or terminated on time stops being a soil building and weed choking tool. And it just starts being a weed. There are basically five methods for terminating a cover crop that work at the home garden scale. And the right one for you depends on the crop you planted, its growth stage, and the tools you have on hand. I promise you it is not complicated.

[00:28:06] You just have to have an idea of how you are going to terminate that crop before you plant it. The first one is mowing or weed whacking. And this is probably the most accessible method for most home gardeners. And it works best once the cover crop has moved into its flowering stage. If you cut it too early while the plant is still purely vegetative, it very well may just simply regrow from the base once you cut it off.

[00:28:32] The cut material, though, if you cut it at the right time, stays on the soil surface as a mulch, which you can leave in place to keep suppressing weeds and holding moisture while it slowly breaks down. Or you can just turn it into the soil a few weeks later. The second method is tilling. And I'm not a proponent of tilling just for tilling's sake, but tilling will directly incorporate the cover crop into the soil. And it does work best during the vegetative growth stage.

[00:29:02] Okay, so we do this before the flowers appear. We want that tissue to still be soft enough for a hand tiller to be able to chew through it without it wrapping around the tines. If you let the cover crop get tall or fibrous, then you want to mow it first and then till it second. That is a far easier combination than just tilling alone. Again, for it not wrapping around those tines. I would recommend turning cover crops under at least three to four weeks before you plan to plant

[00:29:32] because we want to give the soil microbes time to break that material down before your vegetables need that space and those nutrients. Those soil microbes are going to be using the nitrogen to break down that material temporarily and we don't want to steal that from our plants. So this does require just a little bit of planning. Another option is to smother or tarp. If you have the time and you don't want to disturb the soil at all, then you can cover your cover crop with a tarp.

[00:30:00] That's going to starve it of the light until it dies. This is a really good no-till option and it works really well when you combine it with a first pass of mowing, especially if the crop has gotten tall because we do want that tarp to lie pretty flat in order to be able to really do its job and then just make sure that you weigh down that tarp so it can do its job and it stays in place. And then the final one is crimping.

[00:30:26] Crimping is probably the method that most home gardeners either have never heard of before or they have only seen it like on a large scale on farms. A crimper flattens and crushes the stems of a standing cover crop without cutting it. This destroys the plant's vascular tissue so it can no longer move water and nutrients and it just dies in place while it is still rooted.

[00:30:50] So you end up with this flat mat of residue on the surface that acts as an instant mulch. And because the roots stay intact in the soil instead of being torn out, you get less soil disturbance than tilling and you get a cleaner surface than mowing. So you can make a homemade version of a crimper just by taking a metal fence post and then creating a rope handle on each end.

[00:31:18] So you hold the bar parallel to the ground and you just step down on it to flatten the crop. Now the timing matters here, probably more so than with any of the other methods. Crimping works because the plant is directing most of its energy into flowering and seed production and it just can't recover from being crushed at that point. So if you crimp it too early while the plant is still in that very vigorous vegetative growth stage,

[00:31:47] it's just going to pop back up for you and it's going to keep on growing. So you have to wait until the crop has reached that like flowering to seed set window before you crimp it down. And this is going to work best on the crops that have like a sturdy or hollow stem. So winter rye or barley, buckwheat if you're doing this in the summer and oats, these all crimp really well.

[00:32:11] But for a first timer, you might just decide to skip this method and just go with one of the early ones that I mentioned. And then finally, there's winter killing. This one doesn't require you to do anything at all. You plant a cover crop that isn't hardy in your zone like oats and forage radish and a hard freeze does the termination for you. Right. The plant collapses into just a mat of dead tissue. It protects the soil through the coldest months.

[00:32:38] It's easy to rake aside or just sort of lightly, you know, use a broad fork to fork it in once you're ready to plant in the spring. And that's it. Of course, you know, this only works on species that are actually vulnerable to your winter temperature. So this is going to depend on where you live. Don't count on a freeze to take out something that's cold hardy like a winter rye or a hairy vetch. Those crops need one of the other methods. But, you know, if you're doing something that does winter kill, you know, oats particularly this works on, then, you know, hey, you don't have to worry about doing anything to them.

[00:33:07] It's going to take care of itself. Now, it helps to understand why a grass cover crop and a legume cover crop don't decompose in the same way on the same schedule. This is one of the things that kind of confuses people when they first combine or they buy a blend and they see things that aren't quite growing or decomposing at the same rate.

[00:33:37] A mature grass like winter rye has a high ratio of carbon to nitrogen in its tissue, which means the soil microbes breaking it down need to pull nitrogen from somewhere to fuel that decal. And the only place they can get that is in the soil. That temporarily ties up the nitrogen that your next crop would otherwise need to use. Legumes, like the crimson clover or the hairy vetch, they have a lower carbon to nitrogen ratio.

[00:34:07] And that ratio is actually closer to the ratio in the microbes themselves. So they break down faster and they release nitrogen instead of tying it up. So this is the reason why that grass legume mix works so well together. The legumes faster breakdown helps to offset the temporary nitrogen draw from the grass residue,

[00:34:31] which means everything is broken down into the soil in time for your crops to go in as planned without the threat of nitrogen theft. Whatever method you choose, timing the termination to your next planting date matters probably just as much as the method itself. Give a grass-heavy cover crop at least a couple of weeks to start breaking down before you plant into that bed.

[00:34:59] Longer if you've tilled it in rather than leaving it as a surface mulch. And if you're planning a mixed planting like a rye and a hairy vetch together, keep in mind those two species may not reach their ideal termination stage at exactly the same time. You'll usually end up timing the cut to whichever crop is furthest along and just understand that the other one gets terminated either a little bit earlier or a little bit later than what you might think is ideal.

[00:35:30] All right, my gardening friends, that's it for today. In the show notes, I am linking to every source that I use to put this episode together, including a full species chart. If you want the seeding rates for anything that we covered and the breakdown of all five termination methods in one place. The main takeaway is this. An empty garden bed is wasted potential. And cover crops are one of the cheapest, lowest effort ways to turn that potential into better soil

[00:35:59] by the time you plant your regular harvestable crops again. Start with one bed if this is new to you. You don't need to cover crop your entire garden this year to see the difference that it makes. Until next time, my gardening friends. Keep on cultivating that dream garden and we'll talk again soon.