After our final fall harvests, we plant cover crops such as winter wheat and oats.
Cover crops suppress weeds, protect soil and help retain nutrients through the winter.
Many cover crops are also nitrogen fixers, which means that they pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, bring it into the soil and use it to increase growth. After these cover crops die, the additional nitrogen in the soil becomes available to whatever is planted next - providing a sustainable, natural form of nitrogen fertilizer!
In this photo, you can see we used winter wheat as a cover crop this year. winter wheat can live through cold winters, and it grows very fast, so it quickly crowds out germinating weeds.
Do you have a favourite cover crop for your farm/garden?