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September 22, 2011

If you've pulled out your vegetables and you've got bare soil in your garden, it is a good time of year to spread a cover crop on your veggie garden. A cover crop is a legume or grain that will grow up in the fall, survive the winter, and then when you till it under in the spring, you have organic matter added to the soil. It also kills some of the weeds in the garden and it stops erosion, too. 

One of the cover crops I like to use is winter rye. Winter rye grows really quickly in poor soil, in part shade and even with cold temperatures. Winter rye survives the winter and then you want to till it under before it flowers and produces a seed head. At that point it's producing rye seed that you would eat in rye bread.

You can combine sowing rye with a legume like vetch. Vetch fixes nitrogen so that the rye grass will grow better. The combination is a great one to be able to till under in the spring. If you don't want to have a lot of grass to till under, you can use annual rye grass, which will grow through the fall, and dies off in the winter. It will be dead sod in the spring.

To sow the seeds you want to turn the soil under, rake it smooth, and then using a seeder, spread the seed based on how much should be on the garden. For rye, it's about 4 pounds for 1,000 square feet. For the vetch, it's about one pound or so per 1,000 square feet. And then rake it over again and you're all set.

By Charlie Nardozzi