Planting a spring cover crop for your best garden yet!

WATCH PART TWO: Garden cover crop termination (without a tractor!)

Does companion planting with beans, peas, or other legumes give nitrogen to neighboring plants, or is this a myth? Have you ever heard to companion plant with beans or peas to give neighboring plants more nitrogen? Or that simply by planting beans in your garden, your soil will gain nitrogen? In this video, we dive into this topic more deeply!

While it is true that legumes CAN fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and onto their roots (stored in nodules on the root system), legumes do not fixate nitrogen for the benefit of the neighboring plants: they produce it for themselves, for the production of their seed pods! We explain this further in the video, but to summarize here: if you harvest the beans or peas from your garden, you no longer get the nitrogen benefits of legumes! In order to fix the nitrogen and keep it in your soil for OTHER plants to benefit from, you need to do two things:
1) Inoculate with rhizobia
2) terminate (kill) the legume before the plant has gone to seed, ideally at flowering stage or just before (though, note, you could choose to wait and terminate later but at that point the nitrogen in the plant will be held ABOVE ground, not in the roots below, and the entire plant, including seed pods, will need to be worked into the soil to achieve nitrogen benefits)

We'll go over this more in detail in this video, and show you how we cover crop with peas in the spring to help achieve organic matter and nitrogen benefits in our soil!

[mistygeller]

Fantastic information!!! Thank you so much Bri!! I found your channel sometime late last year and have been watching and taking notes ever since! So, now I’m going back and rewatching at times like this, where it’s becoming spring in northern lower Michigan 😊 The things that you have been explaining about soil health and what to do to improve the soil, biodiversity in the garden, cover cropping…. Is all absolutely fascinating and you explain it in a way that is easy to understand and makes so much sense!! Make your videos as long as you want, you have my undivided attention!!

[Whipporwhill]

We've been using Sunn Hemp, Crotalaria juncea, for a cover crop. Amazing! Serious bio mass, & fast (60 days). Also good with forage radish & oats, depending on timing, etc. A 50 pound bag is around $100 at our local seed supplier, so economical, too.

[signyo]

Super helpful! I'm thinking of covercropping my dahlia beds and this answered many of my questions. Thank you🙏🙏🙏

[chanki]

This is very informative. Can you provide the links to the inoculant and the peas that you used?

[Melissa-pkni]

I adore your channel. Thank you so much for all of your thoughtful content and all of your wonderful intention. You mentioned that you believe clay is underrated soil. I would love to know more about your thoughts on clay. We just bought 44 acres of mostly woods but a beautiful barren that I'm trying to nurture the native ecosystem, remove non-natives, and create a food garden within the space. It's very clay though. So much clay!! And have been doing research, but love your perspective, do you have any video where you talk more about clay you can link me to?? ❤

[MinnTee]

This is exactly what I needed right now. Thank you so much for explaining it clearly. I put on a mix last spring (not all peas) and fought the resulting plants all summer that kept sprouting.

[Mommyslittlegarden]

Thanks for this video! I’m going to start covering this fall.

[karie]

How does a gardener know which cover crop they need for their soil? Do you get a soil test first to find out what the soil is lacking?

[srh]

This is so helpful! Do you have any recommendations on how to choose a rhizobia inoculant? Should it come in a liquid, powder, contain specific ingredients, etc? Thank you!!

[Star]

I have learned so much from you in such a short while...THANKS

[waykeeperfarmandnerdery]

Thank you so much for explaining your process, especially timing for termination!

[petalforward]

As always such important Information and you explain it so it's easily understood. I planted Daikon radish where my flower field will eventually be unfortunately it arrived super late. And didn't get enough growth for the what I am needing it for which is hard pan clay that doesn't drain well. Do you have suggestions that I can use for compacted heavy clay soil for Spring? We did do a very light till and I'm trying to avoid having to till in the future. It's currently under water as it's so much lower then the rest of the yard but I'm going to keep at it . Thank you so much for the wealth of knowledge you share it's greatly appreciated

[barbaravanerp]

I’m thinking of trying radish seeds for a cover crop because I have zero organic matter in my backyard. New construction. Does black tarp make it warmer? Why did you choose white?

[evaedmonds]

Hi! This is our first try at cover crops this spring. Do we just allow time to let the cut off crop wither? This helps the nitrogen be available before planting our garden? If i does grow too thick, would it be ok to throw part of it into a compost for later? Thanks!

[anna_boston]

We’ve all heard that the Native Americans planted beans besides squash and corn to supply nitrogen for these plants - has that been debunked, or is there something they did or used to inoculate the beans, so the nitrogen stayed in the soil, and benefited other plants nearby? Thanks for the wonderful channel! I’m assuming you’ve read One-Straw Revolution.

[Rootcraft_UK]

I understand that you don’t want your cover crop to go to seed. If you used for example lupin, could you harvest the flowers as a cash crop and terminate the rest? I think you could do this with phacelia right?

[safirahpoulter]

What brand if Inoculation with Rhizobia do you use please???? Love all your videos. I'm planting vegetables for the first time this year and dahlias as well following your advice.

[lawrenberghanson]

Such useful information! Thanks for sharing! You are always on your knees without protection - I have RA so it makes my stomach feel funny when I see others not on cushions to protect their knees or wrist. 😂 Do you do any self-care before and after a day's work to make sure you don't injure yourself?

[christineann]

I plan on just chopping and dropping when I do a cover crop. I have very sandy soil that is low in organic matter and nitrogen and potassium. I’m looking for something that can add both in early spring but is easy to terminate. I don’t have big tarps or anything, I would just be chopping and dropping. Could I plant something that would winter kill? I live in zone 4b. Thank you:)

[robertamcintyre]

I am new to your channel. Is there a reason you don't use black tarp to keep your soil warm when you are starting your cover crop?