Trying it in my raised beds for the first time this year. I got a mix of cereal ryegrain, Austrian winter peas, and buckwheat. Germination was not as good as I had hoped but it's going to cover the beds before we get snow I think. Next year I want to try something with vetch in it.
I grow cover crops in a different raised bed each winter -- a mix of oats, vetch, and some sort of field pea. That way, I still have all my other beds to grow cool-season veggies. The cover crops do an amazing job of improving the soil. The main thing we need in my hot, arid climate is to improve the water-holding capacity of the soil, and cover crops really help with this.
I've grown oats as a cover crop in my raised beds. I harvested the oats to use for herbal medicine, then did a chop and drop of the oatstraw, using it as a mulch for the next (tomatoes, potatoes) then mixed it up in the soil after the harvest of those plants. Worked very well.
I have cover-cropped with merrigolds in my raised bed to get rid of root-knot nematodes. worked extremely well. Also tried sunhemp and is seemed to do the trick too. Grew them over the summer season and am having a productive fall cash crop in the affected beds
I may have already told you, but I just dug up some more plants from my containers and didn't find any nematodes. Your mustard green cover crop advice has really done the trick. All my containers and my 20' x 44' in-ground garden were heavily infested. I sacrificed my fall/winter garden and am on my third cover crop. When one gets mature, I till it in and start another. Hopefully, this spring/summer will be much better. Wish I had known about this 20 years ago. Thank you so much for sharing.
I use cover crops in my raised beds over winter if I'm not using it. On top of that I modified them to keep my little chicks once they've feathered out. They over winter in the beds, come spring they'll move out and join the adult flock, my garden beds are ready spring.
Travis, good morning, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The best explanation for home gardeners. I usually use cover crops in the summer between the end of the spring garden and start of fall garden. I buy a bag of those little brown field peas at grocery for nitrogen fixing, and add some buckwheat for scavenging and bees. I love the idea of planting a bed for winter with rape,clover and mustard and when I go out to feed chickens in the coup, just grab a couple handfuls for a treat.
We are in Missouri now after years in California and really needing to learn a lot about the area, just starting out with raised beds in zone 5b really liked what Travis said about having something growing if you don’t need the bed or over the winter, have always been of the thought that soil is always best with something in it. So thinking cover crop is a good idea.
Travis show us the stage of the bulbing onions growth, I want to see if mine are keeping pace with yours. I know you're a busy man but it won't take but a few minutes to do a short video (without editing)
I agree with all the benefits of cover crops, but I don't because of reasons you mentioned. I only have enough space for growing food. My growing season is really only 7 months, very little will survive late fall and winter, so I grow a spring planting for summer harvest and mid summer planting for fall harvest.
It is totally worth for me it to keep the ground covered. Every place that I have left organic matter to grow or break down the ground is less boggy and softer for spring. Microbes need roots to survive the winter. I live in Oregon and our fall and winter are long, dark, and very wet. There are times when it freezes but I can still grow cold hearty crops for my chickens to keep them healthy and cut my cost of keeping chickens for egg production. I would not say it is right for everyone but it is very good for the soil and my chickens. That makes it worth it for me.
Good video. Definitely want to use a cover crop when not growing a cash crop, especially if you can't mulch it. You really want to avoid a bare, fallow bed.
Mostly I’m using each bed for something, but between some crops I put a sheet of cardboard or sometimes landscape fabric that has holes in it for rain to get through. (I can reuse it later) It works well for me to keep the weeds out but keep soil moisture in the meantime. Then before planting I add compost and starter fertilizer. Just easier for me that way.
Even in my raised beds (using Mineral Tubs) I plant a mustard cover crop. Any nutrients it absorbs gets reincorporated back in spring, plus for the soil life retention. The sun even in winter is pounding the top inch or so with UV radiation that can kill off necessary bacteria. The cover shade helps protect.
Great video and i appreciate this. This is our first year that we incorporated raised beds into our gardening plan's. Currently, we have fall crops still in and luckily still producing. After seeing this, i will definitely remember to always grow something in there as well. At least save us on animal feed as much as possible into winter
I am in the process of taking out all 7 of our wood raised beds and replacing them with 12 metal raised beds. I rotate crops almostvall the time. So far i have not had a free bed to use cover crops. Even though i bought a good size bad of cover crops this spring.
I haven’t setup my raised beds yet. I would imagine in the future I would probably do cover crops for some of them. I’m going to have 9 beds. Thanks for doing a video on this. It’s helps😊
I am currently using Rye Grass, Vetch and Mustard as cover crops. I was hoping to rehabilitate my raised beds after the whooping they took with the heat and drought from last summer. Everything is going well. They look like big chia pets.
Can you post where you bought the seeds for the covercrop. I have an area where I plannted a guava and the plant died. Cant figure out why but upon researching , I think I may have nematodes in that area. I added a cover crop mix from a local nursery but it was a small package . I bought another guava which is in a 25 gal pot will plant in another spot come spring.
love your video's and need your opinion on something,i have sandy easily drained ground soil down to over a foot,i have a lot of rockwool which is like insulation but comes from processed lava rock and is used in hydrophonics and greenhouses would it help or hurt my soil to till it in to my soil to hold water better,thanks danny.
If you have access to affordable compost, I might try just layering compost on top of the sandy soil. Don't till it into the soil, just put a couple inches of it on top. We did that in several of our plots years ago and it has worked very well.
I only did the cover crop thing once and I don't see me ever doing it again. There is the cost of the seeds, the labor planting the cover crop, my ground is flat, and the soil doesn't stay completely void of plants because nature is always popping up some type of weed, The bottom-line is fertilizer is less expansive the cover crop seeds. Don't listen to me because I'm one of the people that till and run disks to make rows. I'm not all bad, I am changing over to soil blocks for seed starting to cut down on plastics. I didn't do it to be green, I did it because I'm lazy and didn't like the extra work that it takes to clean, store, replace and pop plants out of the cells. As part of being lazy I do put in the extra work to put in drip tape, so I can be lazy when it comes to watering. I can't say enough good things about drip tape. It's so easy to put together and use even a lazy person like me sees the vale in it.
Well i been telling ya gardening is hard when your pushing 80...i believe im at a spot i cant do it anymore...i got peas. Ready spinach lettuce radish broccoli cabbage and cauliflower and dont have the energy to even pick them..
😢 I feel for you I'm getting there myself. It gets harder every season to get excited about gardening when it's so painful. The raised beds have helped me a lot, much less weeds but expensive and took me several years to get the few I have.
How about cover crop termination? Raised bed doesnt seem like a candidate for a chicken tractor, lawn mower or roto tiller. Stand up there with a sickle? Hold a weed eater up to waist height? Best I can think of is scissors or maybe hedge trimmers.
Yup....the only time to cover crop a raised bed is if your not using it. ? Why wouldn't ya be using it? Snowbird?(this is legit)... Wanna take a break(this is legit). I'm running out of legit reasons.
Trying it in my raised beds for the first time this year. I got a mix of cereal ryegrain, Austrian winter peas, and buckwheat. Germination was not as good as I had hoped but it's going to cover the beds before we get snow I think. Next year I want to try something with vetch in it.
I grow cover crops in a different raised bed each winter -- a mix of oats, vetch, and some sort of field pea. That way, I still have all my other beds to grow cool-season veggies. The cover crops do an amazing job of improving the soil. The main thing we need in my hot, arid climate is to improve the water-holding capacity of the soil, and cover crops really help with this.
I've grown oats as a cover crop in my raised beds. I harvested the oats to use for herbal medicine, then did a chop and drop of the oatstraw, using it as a mulch for the next (tomatoes, potatoes) then mixed it up in the soil after the harvest of those plants. Worked very well.
I have cover-cropped with merrigolds in my raised bed to get rid of root-knot nematodes. worked extremely well. Also tried sunhemp and is seemed to do the trick too. Grew them over the summer season and am having a productive fall cash crop in the affected beds
I may have already told you, but I just dug up some more plants from my containers and didn't find any nematodes. Your mustard green cover crop advice has really done the trick. All my containers and my 20' x 44' in-ground garden were heavily infested. I sacrificed my fall/winter garden and am on my third cover crop. When one gets mature, I till it in and start another. Hopefully, this spring/summer will be much better. Wish I had known about this 20 years ago. Thank you so much for sharing.
Glad it worked!
I use cover crops in my raised beds over winter if I'm not using it. On top of that I modified them to keep my little chicks once they've feathered out. They over winter in the beds, come spring they'll move out and join the adult flock, my garden beds are ready spring.
Travis, good morning, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The best explanation for home gardeners. I usually use cover crops in the summer between the end of the spring garden and start of fall garden. I buy a bag of those little brown field peas at grocery for nitrogen fixing, and add some buckwheat for scavenging and bees. I love the idea of planting a bed for winter with rape,clover and mustard and when I go out to feed chickens in the coup, just grab a couple handfuls for a treat.
We are in Missouri now after years in California and really needing to learn a lot about the area, just starting out with raised beds in zone 5b really liked what Travis said about having something growing if you don’t need the bed or over the winter, have always been of the thought that soil is always best with something in it. So thinking cover crop is a good idea.
Travis show us the stage of the bulbing onions growth, I want to see if mine are keeping pace with yours. I know you're a busy man but it won't take but a few minutes to do a short video (without editing)
I agree with all the benefits of cover crops, but I don't because of reasons you mentioned. I only have enough space for growing food. My growing season is really only 7 months, very little will survive late fall and winter, so I grow a spring planting for summer harvest and mid summer planting for fall harvest.
I grow cowpeas in Auetin over the heat of summer then both crop and drop and add to my compost piles.
It is totally worth for me it to keep the ground covered. Every place that I have left organic matter to grow or break down the ground is less boggy and softer for spring. Microbes need roots to survive the winter. I live in Oregon and our fall and winter are long, dark, and very wet. There are times when it freezes but I can still grow cold hearty crops for my chickens to keep them healthy and cut my cost of keeping chickens for egg production. I would not say it is right for everyone but it is very good for the soil and my chickens. That makes it worth it for me.
Great video, Travis. I actually planted cover crops in my beds because of you.
Good video. Definitely want to use a cover crop when not growing a cash crop, especially if you can't mulch it. You really want to avoid a bare, fallow bed.
Looking forward to the termination of the cover crop video. Thanks for all of the great information!
Mostly I’m using each bed for something, but between some crops I put a sheet of cardboard or sometimes landscape fabric that has holes in it for rain to get through. (I can reuse it later) It works well for me to keep the weeds out but keep soil moisture in the meantime. Then before planting I add compost and starter fertilizer. Just easier for me that way.
Even in my raised beds (using Mineral Tubs) I plant a mustard cover crop. Any nutrients it absorbs gets reincorporated back in spring, plus for the soil life retention. The sun even in winter is pounding the top inch or so with UV radiation that can kill off necessary bacteria. The cover shade helps protect.
Great video and i appreciate this. This is our first year that we incorporated raised beds into our gardening plan's. Currently, we have fall crops still in and luckily still producing. After seeing this, i will definitely remember to always grow something in there as well. At least save us on animal feed as much as possible into winter
happy camping, guys!
I am in the process of taking out all 7 of our wood raised beds and replacing them with 12 metal raised beds. I rotate crops almostvall the time. So far i have not had a free bed to use cover crops. Even though i bought a good size bad of cover crops this spring.
I haven’t setup my raised beds yet. I would imagine in the future I would probably do cover crops for some of them. I’m going to have 9 beds. Thanks for doing a video on this. It’s helps😊
wow look at the size of the cabbage
I am currently using Rye Grass, Vetch and Mustard as cover crops. I was hoping to rehabilitate my raised beds after the whooping they took with the heat and drought from last summer. Everything is going well. They look like big chia pets.
😂😂😂
Can you post where you bought the seeds for the covercrop.
I have an area where I plannted a guava and the plant died. Cant figure out why but upon researching , I think I may have nematodes in that area.
I added a cover crop mix from a local nursery but it was a small package .
I bought another guava which is in a 25 gal pot will plant in another spot come spring.
I get mine from Green Cover Seed online.
What USDA Hardiness zone are you located in (the new chart just released)? Thanks for sharing
Formerly 8b, now 9a.
I used nothing but winter rye in my beds for my first try since it does easy.. thoughts?
Should work well. I don't use much winter rye because my chickens don't like it that much, but it's a good idea if you're not grazing.
love your video's and need your opinion on something,i have sandy easily drained ground soil down to over a foot,i have a lot of rockwool which is like insulation but comes from processed lava rock and is used in hydrophonics and greenhouses would it help or hurt my soil to till it in to my soil to hold water better,thanks danny.
If you have access to affordable compost, I might try just layering compost on top of the sandy soil. Don't till it into the soil, just put a couple inches of it on top. We did that in several of our plots years ago and it has worked very well.
Can you expand on your watering system for your raised beds? I need to do something like that to mine because I am tired of hand watering.
Here's a blog on our website that explains our system: lazydogfarm.com/blogs/garden-journal/raised-bed-drip-irrigation-system
@@LazyDogFarm thank you, Travis!! Much appreciated❤️
I only did the cover crop thing once and I don't see me ever doing it again. There is the cost of the seeds, the labor planting the cover crop, my ground is flat, and the soil doesn't stay completely void of plants because nature is always popping up some type of weed, The bottom-line is fertilizer is less expansive the cover crop seeds. Don't listen to me because I'm one of the people that till and run disks to make rows. I'm not all bad, I am changing over to soil blocks for seed starting to cut down on plastics. I didn't do it to be green, I did it because I'm lazy and didn't like the extra work that it takes to clean, store, replace and pop plants out of the cells. As part of being lazy I do put in the extra work to put in drip tape, so I can be lazy when it comes to watering. I can't say enough good things about drip tape. It's so easy to put together and use even a lazy person like me sees the vale in it.
Well i been telling ya gardening is hard when your pushing 80...i believe im at a spot i cant do it anymore...i got peas. Ready spinach lettuce radish broccoli cabbage and cauliflower and dont have the energy to even pick them..
😢 I feel for you I'm getting there myself. It gets harder every season to get excited about gardening when it's so painful. The raised beds have helped me a lot, much less weeds but expensive and took me several years to get the few I have.
How about cover crop termination? Raised bed doesnt seem like a candidate for a chicken tractor, lawn mower or roto tiller. Stand up there with a sickle? Hold a weed eater up to waist height? Best I can think of is scissors or maybe hedge trimmers.
Fence the chickens in them for a week or two and they will take care of it and fertilize the beds for you.
We cut it and flip it -- really easy to do with a digging fork or trenching shovel.
Where do you get rape seed for cover crop?
Green Cover Seed online
What is the hat you got on man? Ducks Unlimited?
Yeah. A buddy of mine does the auction for the local DU banquet every year, and hooked me up with a hat.
Sure why not?
Yup....the only time to cover crop a raised bed is if your not using it. ? Why wouldn't ya be using it? Snowbird?(this is legit)... Wanna take a break(this is legit). I'm running out of legit reasons.
Big new term is for regeneration.