Closely reading the landscape of late-summer and early-autumn food and flower gardens, the gardener responds to growth, flowering, fruiting, ripening, setting seed, and the call to harvest. Soil life goes on after harvest: While we are nourished by the harvest, the soil must be nourished to sustain soil life until spring planting. As the expression goes, “Stop treating soil like dirt.”
Where garlic, onions, potatoes, early carrots had been lifted from the earth; mulch and interloper weeds removed; and the bare, expectant ground raked smooth, I broadcast cow peas and oats cover crop seed to grow until hard frost or beyond. Crimson clover was seeded along the beds on either side of a snap pea trellis.
While feeling the motions and rhythm of broadcasting the peas and oats, the image of “The Sower” by Jean-François Millet came to mind. I jumped for the role of a contemporary Sower!
Peas and oats are grown as companions: The oat grass serves as a “nurse” crop, a support, for the vining peas. It wasn’t long after watching the two grow that I began to harvest the tips of the pea shoots for delectable edible fare. This cover crop is also planted in spring before a bed is needed for a summer crop.
It is widely recommended that peas and oats, as well as crimson clover, be planted four to six weeks before the first killing frost, whereas winter rye is successful if seeded until the end of October. In the Berkshires, the first frost in 2021 was around November 1. In 2022, frost fell at the end of September.
When seeding is complete, I sometimes press the seed into the surface of the soft ground with medium-strong strikes of my open hands. Then, water with a fine spray from a watering can or hose, taking care not to disturb the seedbed. Next, fill a bucket with friable earth—I use the same bucket as for seeding—and broadcast a half-inch layer of earth over the seeds. Water again with the fine spray unless rain is predicted. Small seeds require a thinner layer to cover.
Cover crop plants are dedicated to harvesting sunlight that, through their leaves and roots, feeds the community of microorganisms that compose the life in the soil. The extensive network of roots also increases the organic matter in the soil, maintaining its loft and tilth (i.e., loose), friable, airy and crumbly earth in contrast to compacted ground that is susceptible to erosion. For a brief but compelling list of cover crop functions, visit Cornell’s website. Review my 2016 column, “The 21st-century gardener.”
The bottom line, to avoid being embarrassed, heed the advice of the Practical Farmers of Iowa.
