While farmers plant millions acres of plants like rye and clover to boost soil health and crowd out weeds, a cover crop does the same thing in the smallest home garden. With cover crops, a vegetable ...

Put your garden to work over winter by planting a cover crop this fall. Covering the soil with plants that are turned into the soil or smothered and allowed to decompose in spring provides many ...

“No piece of steel can benefit the soil like roots from a good cover crop.”—Steve Groff The first time I heard about cover crops was in school when we were studying the dust bowl. Farmers learned to ...

Right now, it seems like vegetable garden season will go on forever. But we know that eventually the cold weather will show up and put an end to our garden. Since we know it’s going to happen, let’s ...

Cover crops are literally a green blanket for the soil. They are fast-growing plants grown in garden/field spaces opened after harvest. Cover crop plants serve to increase nutrients, introduce organic ...

"Fall is not the end of the gardening year; it is the start of next year's growing season. The mulch you lay down will protect your perennial plants during the winter and feed the soil as it decays, ...

A few weeks ago a reader and a friend from the pool who lives near Loudonville asked me if a person could leave his cereal rye in the field this season. I said I’m not sure, but I’ll find out if that ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – No one wants to think of harvest’s end as the vegetable garden reaches peak, but now’s the time to plant over-winter cover crops to improve your soil for next season. If you’re not ...

With cool-season vegetable crops going into the ground, many gardeners who ventured into cover cropping last autumn may ask a familiar question: What do I do now? Their crops have fulfilled their ...

Here's a riddle: What will weed and till your soil as well as feed your plants? If you answered "me," you are right. But there is also another answer, and that is "cover crop," which is a plant grown ...

Any tomatoes currently on the plant as summer winds down are likely to ripen nicely in the next month or so. Current blossoms, however, may lead to good tomatoes, mealy tasteless tomatoes or none at ...