Ep. 404 - Planting Cover Crops in the Home Garden

Planting cover crops at the end of the growing season is becoming more popular, even in small gardens. These plants have seeds that are easy to scatter, and they do the hard work of fixing nutrients in the soil and improving soil condition over the winter before spring planting.

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Old Farmer's Almanac - Daily Almanac

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:08

Good morning. Welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Robin Heiser, and I am your host. How's it going out there, guys? This is a show that provides insight and tools to build the lives and homesteads of our dreams. Today is Friday, August 19th, 2022. And we have an old farmer's almanac episode this morning as I hit the road. I'm on my way to my brother's house, east of the big city. We're gonna finish up that deck today. We've got the inspection coming up this afternoon, so we're gonna do a quick old farmer's almanac episode. And for those of you who are new, maybe not sure what the old farmer's almanac episodes are all about, basically we take a look at the daily almanac. These are emails that you can learn more about in the show notes. And we can learn more about who was born on this day, what happened today in history. Fun facts like there's 34 days until autumn begins, and on mornings like this, it sure feels that way. And there's questions of the day and puzzles of the day, and like I said, fun facts like this. Today's National Potato Day, August 19th. That's right. And articles on, well, in this case, potatoes. The taste and texture of homegrown potatoes are far superior to those of store-bought spuds. Garden poters also provide a bounty of nutrients. Here's how to grow and harvest potatoes in your home garden. There's an article on potatoes. There is also an article on planting cover crops in the home garden. Planting cover crops at the end of the growing season is becoming more popular even in small gardens. These plants have seeds that are easy to scatter, and they do the hard work of fixing nutrients in the soil and improving soil condition over the winter before spring. So if you want to learn more on cover crops, you can definitely do so by checking out the article in the Daily Almanac today. There is an article on Planet Rise and Set Calculator. Which planets will be visible tonight? There is a calculator to find out when the plants will be visible in your location. So if that is of interest to you, check that out. There is also an article detailing out a recipe for roasted potato salad. Our taster loved this low-fat alternative to the traditional potato salad. Besides being easy to make and delicious, it can be served warm at room temperature or cold, which makes it perfect for every occasion from picnics to cabin fever potlucks. And there is also an article on drying your own herbs for tea. Grab the bounty of fresh herbs while you can and let's dry those leaves for tea. It's simple. See both how to dry your herbs and also to make a good cup of herbal tea. So if that article sounds like your cup of tea, then check out the Daily Almanac for more. And that's what we've got in store for the Daily Almanac. Let's take a look at planting cover crops in the garden. But I just realized something, I can't do that because I am on a phone that isn't connected to the internet. Normally I do this two-phone thing, but I don't have two phones that are connected to the internet. I have the one. So let's talk cover crops and building soil. We're just gonna wing it. I'm gonna talk freely because this is something that's gonna have to be done as we continue building up the Airbnb experience. But no worries because while I'm no expert, I can speak a bit about this because that's what we've done here. Or that's what we did here before Cody took over the whole market garden several years ago. Who is Cody, you might ask? Cody is our tenant farmer. You can learn more at YorkMetalFarm.com slash tenant farmer with a dash between tenant and farmer. Or just go to yorkmetto farm.com and poke around, give the whole site a scroll and you'll see it there. But uh many, many moons ago, what I did with mom's help, um, but largely myself was after building the well mom helped in the uh in in the very first market garden, but um before before we improved the soil there, part of the NRCS NRCS EQIP project, the National Resource Conservation Service uh grant program for high tunnels involved the installation of a cover crop. And in my opinion, without a doubt, the easiest cover crop to install is buckwheat. And what I did was I simply tilled the ground, turned it under, and used a chest carry broadcast spreader, you know, with a little hand crank on it, and spread that around and drove over it with the tractor, and just made sure I evenly packed it down. And that was it, and then I watered regularly. Now there are some other seed mixes that you can use for cover crops, and I have used these also with um things like uh millet and half a dozen other seeds, um, but what they are exactly I don't recall, and I was hoping to get that article and uh share have that refresh my memory before sharing my own experience, but unfortunately I'm just going from memory. Okay, so but basically, buckwheat, in my opinion, is the easiest, and if you are interested in more of a seed blend, any seed catalog is going to be able to not any seed catalog, but they're readily available online. So, um in terms of building soil, there was an article that I've talked about before, I've linked to before, but what we did to build soil in the first market garden was as follows. We did the whole lasagna type thing, but with a twist on it. And the twist came from Nick Ferguson, and this was originally heard on the survival podcast. You can learn more at tspc.co. But this was a recipe, if you will, by Nick Ferguson from Homegrown Liberty that had some ratios, but um I'll see if I can dig it up. And since I'm on the road, guys, I'm not going to be able to update the show notes for a little while. Um, and the actual article that I referenced is no longer online. However, I have the information, so maybe what this is turning into is Rob Kaiser's soil recipe because again, I didn't I didn't do it exactly as Dick did, but uh we did something similar, and what that was was as follows. We laid out cardboard thick on top of the existing soil, and then spread some wood chips. Alright, and then on top of that, and and speaking of cardboard, you can get cardboard from big box stores, wholesale nurseries, any wholesale a lot of places will just junk their cardboard, and if you ask them to set it aside and get it out of there consistently, you may have some of the best cardboard and easiest to work with because a lot of times this they're in big boxes. So, anyways, free cardboard is available, you just gotta know, you know, you just gotta poke around. So uh I'm getting to my coffee destination, and I'm gonna have to wrap this up quick, guys. But basically, you want to throw down a lot of organic matter, chicken feed, you know, blood meal, bone meal, dried molasses, anything that bacteria and microbes are going to feed on, that's what you want to throw down. And you want to throw down more wood chips, okay? And in this case, our very first market garden was about uh not quite a quarter, like a quarter acre is stretching it. Alright, he's not going, I'm going. Um so let's just say an eighth of an acre or something like that. I decided to bring in I think the max I could fit on that truck was seven, maybe I pushed it with eight, but I tried to bring it as much. Uh we just happened to carry, or the company I used to work for carried nice organic screened topsoil. Now a lot of places have topsoil that is shit, it's very poor quality. But if you can find a good topsoil distributor, bring in a bunch of that as well, add that into the mix, and um you know, top dress it with that if you want to get going immediately. Now that's a whole lot of work, but it can provide some beautiful results. And um boy, put a cover crop into that and let that grow out through the season. Now we're now we're talking. And one thing, you know, that this little article in the Daily Almanac referenced, if I'm not mistaken, was letting your cover crop go through winter. And one thing that you can do is let these cover crop blends, in addition to this whole soil preparation mix, is let these cover crop blends grow up in something other than buckwheat. Now, buckwheat's very easy to just till back into the soil and do again, do again and do it, do again, you know. But some of these other cover crop blends with millet and whatever, this this stuff will get up like six feet tall. So, you know, you you you gotta be mindful of that. And if you have a small tractor, one thing that you can do is simply way easier if you have a bucket too, is just simply dry, you know, roll that stuff over and use your bucket kind of as a makeshift roller crimper and just push it down. It'll look better over the winter, it'll decompose, and uh you know, it's just something to think about. So, hopefully, guys, that was uh valuable information, or you found that to be of value as we get ready for fall, and we are all thinking about ways that we can improve our soil. And these are some ways that maybe you know are a little less conventional, but um definitely provide results, and that is what we are looking for is results. So remember to feed the worms, feed the life in the soil, because that is what makes for healthy soil. And with that, guys, that is it for today. I hope you had a wonderful week. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I hope that you have a wonderful weekend as well. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.