Prepare your garden beds for winter: Using Cover Crops

The best, most natural, way to prepare your garden beds for winter, using cover crops

Cover crops can benefit the soil health of any home gardener whether your a first time gardener or not. They can be used in market gardens, raised bed gardens, or flower gardens.

If you don’t want to make a compost pile, using cover crops as green manure for your garden is a great alternative.

What are Cover Crops?

 Cover crops are a type of green manure that is usually planted at the end of the season to protect the soil and provide nutrients to the plants the following year.

They add a protective layer to the garden soil and act as soil amendments. This is done when the crops break down and leave nutrients into the soil.

Benefits of cover cropping

Any home vegetable garden can benefit from cover crops. Here are a few things that various cover crops can provide for your vegetable or flower garden. 

• attracts beneficial insects
• protects the soil surface (bare soil that has sun exposure slowly depletes the nutrients in the top soil)
• better soil structure
• provides green manure for next year’s crops
• loosens soil compaction with deep roots
• weed control
• prevents soil erosion
• adds organic matter/green manure

Types of cover crops

Cover crop mix from true leaf market I am trying this year. It provides green manure for Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. All of which my soil needs.

I have purchased cover crops from various different seed companies.  There are usually descriptions with each type of cover crop that will tell you what nutrients that specific cover crop will add to the soil, and any other benefits the cover crop might add.

• winter rye
• crimson clover
• hairy vetch
• field peas
• white clover
• cereal rye

When to plant cover crops to prepare your garden beds for winter

If you are wanting to plant cover crops in order to prepare your garden beds for winter, then the best time to start them is late summer or early fall.

After your main crop has been harvested and it is the end of the growing season. If you live in warmer climates you can get away with planting late fall or even early winter.

This will give your cover crops enough time to sprout and establish roots before winter comes. Your cover cop plants will go dormant over the winter if you live in colder climates.

The next spring your cover crops will come out of dormancy and begin to grow again creating that soon-to-be green manure and loose soil. Now, if you like to grow a fall garden, this is where things can get a little different.

You start planting your fall garden about the same time you would plant your cover crop. This would make it so that you don’t have enough time to plant cover crop in time for winter in that garden bed.

Here are some of your options. Try planting the cover crop anyway, in the late fall, and then the seeds may not germinate till early spring.

Or you can wait till early spring to plant the crops. They won’t grow as big and robust as your fall plantings, but they will still provide some soil benefits.

If you wait to plant your cover crops till spring, it is good practice to cover your garden bed with some kind of mulch like straw, leaves, or grass clippings. This protects the soil from harsh weather or from the sun. 

How to plant cover crops in garden beds

Cover crop seeds vary in size so the planting depends on the size of your seeds. If you have smaller seeds you can rake the top of the soil. Broadcast or sprinkle the seeds across the beds (you can do this with raised beds too).

Once you have covered the area of the bed, you gently rake over the top layer of soil again. ALWAYS KEEP GARDEN BED SOIL MOIST DURING THE PLANTING OF SEEDS.

I hear people complain so often that their seeds didn’t germinate, and I am willing to bet that is because they didn’t keep the soil moist. If you have somewhat larger seeds or want more organization to your planting, you can create a shallow row or ditch using your finger, a stick, or a hoe.

Plant your seeds along the little ditch and cover. You can plant your seeds generously. Plant spacing isn’t really much of an issue for most cover crops as you will just be killing them down and using as mulch or compost down the road. 

What to do with your cover crops in the spring

So now that you have selected and planted your cover crops, what do you do with them? Well there are a few options depending on the crop and gardening method you use and if you are using raised garden beds.

Because there are different ways and different gardens, you may need to mix up a few methods to find what works best for you.

1. Till-in method: For people who don’t use tillers in their garden, skip this method. A few weeks before you want to plant your spring crops, till in your cover crop into the soil. The cover crops will break down in the garden bed providing nutrients into the soil.
2. Tarping: People will use a tarp or cover to lay over the cover crop. Do this a month or so out from planting time. The tarp, over time, will kill the cover crop. The crop will be come mulch, protect the soil, and break down and provide nutrients. You can pull the roots out or people simply plant into the cover crop. 
3. Crimping: This works for taller growing cover crops. You can buy cover crop crimping tools to add to your garden tools, or you can rig up your own. Essentially you have a board with ropes or poles coming up on each end for you to hold on to. then you use your board and foot to smash or press down the cover crops, creating thick layers of mulch

I don’t till my garden but I do use a broad fork and I will go down my garden bed full of cover crops to loosen them.

Then I have gone through and flipped over the cover crops so their roots were in the air. This killed them and still allowed the dead plants to break down and add nutrients into the soil.

I have loved experimenting with using cover crops to add organic material into my garden. It is a process and you don’t see the benefits until the following year. It can be hard work, but it is such a good mulch and more cost effective too!

Happy gardening!

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