The Most Versatile Cover Crop: Buckwheat

Buckwheat is the most versatile cover crop. It grows fast, improves soil fertility, feeds beneficial insects, and goes to seed to feed livestock as well. Buckwheat is a wonderful cover crop that deserves a place in your cover cropping system.

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00:00 Introduction
00:40 Description of Buckwheat
01:53 Buckwheat Germination
02:18 Shading Soil and Smothering Weeds with Buckwheat
02:33 Dry Matter Production of Buckwheat
03:01 Buckwheat and Phosphorus
03:35 Buckwheat's Rapid Growth
03:52 Successive Crops of Buckwheat
04:39 Seeding Rates of and Planting Buckwheat
05:27 Buckwheat Cover Crop in the Garden
05:52 Buckwheat Summary

[n.v.b]

Buckwheat is a super food, a delicious grain for human consumption. It's gluten free and highest in protein out of all grains. People in the US are not very familiar with that wonderful grain. I will be trying to grow white buckwheat is our dry dessert of Nevada, zone 7b.

[brycehess]

We use buckwheat, sunflowers, kale, cereal rye and red clover broadcasted right behind the pigs basically all spring and summer...we switch to just the rye/clover in the fall..pigs love it

[jerrybates]

A nice reminder they put in a patch at the nearby university and it was really nice to look at a good asset for horrible soil

[josephtreadlightly]

I would love to get 2 to 3 crops of Buckwheat in a year. But 4 springs in a row we had no rain. This last winter in MN in my location we had 90" of snow. It disappeared with 4 straight days in the 90's & ran off into a low area. I was able to pump that into an area on the property that I call the sponge. In that area that gets alot of sun it only took 6 weeks to dry up after the 2 weeks it took to move the excess water there. I was looking to get multiple crops of Buckwheat a year but all I got was 3 crops in 4 yrs. I plan to broadcast seed next year late in April since i had quite a few tall plants go to seed. In another area I knocked it down after planting some rape & kale but after a rainy week in August we've been dry & hot for a month. In that area on the perimeter it seemed to grow the best. I crimped the interior but weed wipped the perimeter & it wasn't that hard. I have sandy soil with a good p.h. Can't till cuz I'm trying to build up bio-mass & I don't want the areas to fill up with pigweed & lambs-quarters. With April rain I could get a good stand & I would let it go to seed so i could get 2 crops a year if it got 🔥 & dry in July. Just need some consistency for once. Take care.

[naturgehöft-sieghexe]

another video to take notes from or save. I am again grateful you provide all the facts and numbers one would otherwise have to search for. everything i wanted to know before planting buckwheat as a quick cover for a newly dug up swale you already covered. that maybe gives me just enough time to plant diverse bushes and root crop by hand before winter so erosion could be prevented. i am also in somewhat heavy clay and wasn't sure if it would work for that.

[davidsoloninka]

I'm going to give BW a try for my honey bees.

[certifiedhoarder]

I put some buckwheat into every cover crop mix besides my overwintered plantings. Chickens and goats get the seed heads.

My guess on the reason it solubilizes phosphorus better is something to do with a bacteria specific to buckwheat thats somehow good at breaking down phosphate. Look into James F White's work on rhizophagy cycle.

[emli_subfiltz]

What is it Scintific name? Is it Fagopyrum sp?

[stevebrown]

1st year/try at buckwheat . Planted 1st of May, disk the soil and throw and rolled it before a rain .Took a week or more to come up . Month later its flowered maybe 6" tall and only about 10% of the seeds came up . Not much of cover or any help, what went wrong ? NE AR . Cover crop, was wanting to plant afall crop in it .

[tashaheesch]

We row crop in NE corner of South Dakota. This year I am adding buckwheat to our rye + turnip mix. We broadcast N and the cover crop in corn around V4-V7. Our idea is to add diversity, om, and attract beneficial bugs for soybeans the next year. Plus we graze cornstalks so maybe the cows can eat the what is left of the forage. We find out this fall! Thanks for the video

[TexasIndiafarm]

Where do you buy cheap buckwheat. Amazon says $14 for 1 pound