Columns | Kane County Chronicle

Protect and feed your vegetable garden with cover crops

As we’re nearing the end of vegetable garden season, now is the time to think about protecting and feeding your soil for next year’s garden. Cover crops, also referred to as “green manure,” are a natural way to maintain healthy soil.

Cover crops are temporary crops, not harvestable for eating, that provide soil benefits both below and above the ground. Below the surface of the soil, crop roots break up compacted soils by creating channels and tunnels. These pathways make room for successive plant roots to reach deep in to the soil and pull up nutrients. Further, some cover crops in the legume family have nodules on their roots that help fix nitrogen in soils.

Cover crops create a canopy of foliage that provides protection to bare soil. Bare soil is an open invitation for weeds to develop. Creating a foliage canopy will suppress weeds by denying light to the weed seed. And that’s not the only benefit of the canopy; it also provides vital habitat for pollinators and insects.

Once the cover crops have matured the plant debris above the ground provides valuable organic matter to feed your garden. The organic matter can either be worked in to your soil, added to your compost pile or used as mulch for the garden bed.

There are numerous types of cover crops to plant and each crop offers unique benefits to soil needs. Some cover crops are planted in the spring, others in late summer, while others are planted during growing months when beds transition between spring and fall plantings.

A few of my favorite cover crops for late summer planting are oats and a hairy vetch and annual winter rye mixture. Oats will die during the winter, leaving valuable mulch on the surface to protect soil.

Hairy vetch and annual winter rye are companion seeds planted together. This pairing will not die over the winter and will put out the majority of growth during the early weeks of spring. The foliage can be cut down after it begins to flower in early May, preparing the bed for planting in late May. Hairy vetch also adds nitrogen to the soil, an important nutrient for heavy feeding plants such as winter squash and tomatoes. It’s a nice crop to plant in beds where you intend to plant heavy feeders next spring.

By putting in a little extra effort now you are setting up healthy soil conditions for next year.