Cover Crops

  Now that our gardens are finishing up for the season, the question is what do we do now? The short answer is we plant cover crops. The  cover crop which may be used in our garden is clover.
   Mother Nature abhors bare ground, if we don't grow something, Mother Nature will. And Mother Nature grows weeds, lots of weeds! Over the winter the weeds we see are henbit and chickweed. We on the other hand grow cover crops that improve the soil.
  Cover crops are anything we want to grow that prevents weeds and often improve the soil in two way. First, if we plant legumes (clover), these plants grab nitrogen from the air and store the excess nitrogen on their roots. Next spring when it's time to plant, that free nitrogen remains in the soil to feed our plants. The second benefit of cover crops is simply to provide additional organic matter to the soil next spring. The best thing we can do with our cover crops next spring is to mow it off, turn it under or simply poke holes into the residue and plant our transplants into it.
  
  Happy Gardening