A great way to cover your soil in winter and get a jump on spring is to use winter cover crops. Two of my favorites are Austrian winter peas and barley.
I use the same method that I wrote about for summer cover crops; inoculate the peas with beneficial bacteria using a bucket and sugar water. The barley jumps out of your soil in just a few days. During the spring, I harvest the pea tips and use them in salads and stir fry and I cut the barley (before it goes to seed) and use it as straw mulch.
There are a number of reasons to grow cover crops in your garden and to support farmers that do the same. During winter, above ground activity slows down but, at the earth’s surface and below ground wind and water move soil particles and unused nitrogen fertilizer. The loss from your garden may be small but, across vast agricultural landscapes this runoff leads to pollution of rivers, lakes, and streams.
Another reason to use cover crops is the persistent presence of weeds. When I studied weed science at university many of my friends laughed, probably for other reasons. But, little did they know farmers around the world use many resources, including hand labor, chemical herbicides, and diesel fuel, to control these plants that compete with our food crops.
Winter cover crops protect soil from erosion, soak up residual fertilizer, compete against weeds, and serve as a carbon sink. The establishment of a cover crop and its management during spring come at a cost. Typically, this cost is passed onto the farmer. In these times it’s important for us to conserve our soil and water resources and we can by supporting simple solutions like growing cover crops.
