Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horti culture educator with the University of Illinois Extension, coming at you from back Home, Illinois. And we have got a great show for you today, hovercrops, clothing our gardens in plants. That's what where the topic is of the day, and you know I'm not doing this by myself. I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville.

Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. This is the time of year to start clothing our gardens.

That's right. That's right. Do you have bare patches under your tomatoes and peppers? Are you sick and tired of growing tomatoes and peppers and you want to just rip them out and put something else in? Hey.

This is the show for you. So, yeah. This is a fun this is an interesting show. I have dabbled in cover crops, Ken. And I know you have a bit more experience than I have.

So should be I'm looking forward to learning more about them.

Yeah. I'm only a step above dabbling. Whatever that is.

Makes you an expert in my world. Well, I I guess, you know, as as we dive into the topic of cover crops, it's probably a good idea to define a cover crop. Now in my mind, a cover crop is something that you're just using it to protect the soil. But there's probably more to it than that. We'll get into that.

But I guess, Ken, how do you see cover crops when you're using them in your garden?

As I use them, it's just kind of protecting that soil so you don't have that bare soil on there. You can use them to help, build or generate organic matter, increase the organic matter in your soil, suppressing weeds, you're trying to break up potentially pest or disease cycles. So there's a variety of different ways or different things that you can achieve, with cover crops. And, basically, cover crops just gonna be some kind of plant, And there's usually specific plants that we're using for cover crops that you're putting in in your garden. And in this case, it's been done quite a bit in, field crops, corn, and beans.

And it's now kind of moving to the a little more of the gardening world. But putting those those plants in there to serve one of these purposes.

So I yeah. I guess that and that kind of follows into, like, why do people use it? And that that is to, you know, do that soil building, soil protection. Now, the reason why I really turned to cover crops several years ago was we built raised bed gardens. And the raised beds were, you know, it was a mixture of soil and some organic matter, compost, but there really was no structure to it.

I mean, it was very very loose, very airy, and I would say sharply well drained. It was so well drained, we could barely keep any water in it. And so our idea with the cover crops was to install cover crops, namely in the fall, and hope that those roots in the ground would help to create more of a soil structure where we really had none. And I I suppose that works in in the the way that, you know, plant roots have a symbiotic relationship with with soil fungi. I think some bacteria are also responsible for this, but the the production of of glomulan, which roots exude because of that that fungal relationship and helps to bind soil particles together, create that soil structure.

But that's really hard to do when you're just doing a vegetable garden and you have plant roots in the ground for, what, 5, 6 months out of the year? Not not that long. So what are you going to do? Yeah. If that

Yeah. And even with with their cover crops, it still is going to take several years, to really get that that soil structure built up or really add a lot of organic matter. So it's not cover crops aren't going to be a quick fix necessarily to some of these things. But if you do it repeatedly over time, they can help with that stuff.

Yeah. So so we use it to help maybe make our soil a little bit more solid, but other people use it to break up their soil compaction in that regard. So I guess in in your garden, Ken, do you like, what's the point? Like, why are you deploying cover crops in your backyard?

So the main reason we're doing it, is one for weed suppression. So we're using it as a as a mulch when we terminate it or kill it. I also put in tillage radish. I'll break up some of that that compactions, like the service compaction from repeatedly walking on there and stuff. We'll help break that up.

And we usually throw some some clover or something in there just to give that nitrogen fixation because clover bean thing plants in the bean and pea families have, symbiotic relationships with, bacteria. That bacteria can take nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix that into a nitrogen that plants are able to use. So when you're using those in your in your garden, you can help increase that nitrogen content, in the soil. And then, you know, having those roots in there in the ground for all those plants, that's going to contribute to the the buildup or really slow down the loss of organic matter in the soil.

Okay. Well, so I guess, yeah, we we've talked about what they are and a little bit of the why, which we can get into maybe when we talk more about specific types of cover crops, you know, why you might use these types of plants. But there's really 3 broad categories, I'd say, of of cover crop types. You know, you have, I'd say you have kind of your your your legumes, like those nitrogen fixing ones that you mentioned, and then you have sort of those any non legumes. And I guess it could be grasses, or could they be broadleaves, or would we even separate those out into their own groups?

But I mean, I kind of think of broadleaves like some of that tillage radish stuff, as as that's there's those types, but then there's grasses also who have a different type of root system than a tillage radish. That the grasses have a more fibrous y type root system, so they're probably accumulating a lot more of that biomass in the soil. And so I think that's, you know, one of those things. And and so yeah, we have our legumes, we have our non legumes, which could be a couple different things. And then, cool season.

Now what's a cool season type cover crop?

So it would be something like your your tillage radish. So you're planting this usually, in the fall. And then sometimes these are will winter kill, sometimes they won't. Like cereal rye is another one that you can plant that really anytime. But a lot of times you're planting that, in the in that late summer, fall time frame, and that's gonna overwinter then, for you.

Some of the, you know, the clovers and stuff, sometimes are thrown in there. That's what what else? What else? A lot of the the cereal grains, oats or wheat, mustard. I think it was used, peas.

Some other things that we plant in our garden. There's there's versions of that that we would plant as cover crops as well. And then you can break that up into warm season. So usually you're growing these, planting these in the spring. So if you're gonna have a section of your garden that you're not gonna plant, you can put a cover crop in there.

Things like buckwheat, cowpeas, sorghum, things like that. Those would be some examples of stuff that you could plant if you wanted to leave a section without vegetables and work on that soil building or some of the other benefits that cover crops can have.

Yeah. We have a, in our community garden, any garden plots that aren't claimed are often planted with, with a type of cover crop. In the past, one of my favorites has been sunflower, which I don't know how much soil building that does, but it sure does look nice. You know, it looks a lot better than just letting it grow up like an empty community garden plot growing up in weeds or something like that. So planting it in sunflower, that's another way.

And I've I've used that actually before. We at our food donation garden up in Galesburg, we used a a branching sunflower. I think the the cultivar name of that was or not cultivar, the variety name of that was Joker. And it was just like we were taking a little bit of break from a part of this garden, and, we used our our little push seeder, and we dropped in a bunch of, sunflower seeds. Again, branching, so it's a ton of sunflowers occurring in this little section here.

I don't know how much, again, I don't know how much soil building sunflowers give, but it sure did look nice. So and and so maybe that aesthetic also plays into that a little bit too, where instead of letting it it just be fallow and just do whatever it wants, we put something in there. Some type of a, monoculture type appearance, and we're kind of like, makes us feel good to to see that.

Yeah. That's another use of cover crops we had mentioned, you know, for for pollinators or beneficial insects, especially those that you have growing during the summer. The flowering ones, you can draw those in, especially with, like, your beneficial insects and then keep those around and they'll go out, and attack potential pests, that you may have as well.

Yep. I think it was the USDA has a study where they looked at this is out in California where they grow lots of lettuce. And so they planted I think it was more interplanting, but you could call it a cover crop of sweet alyssum. And they noticed that the sweet alyssum brought in a lot more, it was like hooverflies, hoverflies, syrphid flies, whose larva are are predators of aphids. And so they they they noticed when they planted that sweet alyssum within their lettuce fields, they found better biological controls in that regard too.

So there's these plants can they do more than just build soil. Yes. There's a lot of things that they can do.

Yeah. Another thing we forgot to mention. Kind of fumbled this what they can do. But another one is is scavenge nutrients from the soil as well. So if you've got fertilizer, you know, during the winter, nothing's going on here.

In the spring, you're getting rain, you lose nutrients to to run off or, and stuff. Those cover crops can can take that up and hold it. And then as they break down, slowly release that so they can help scavenge some of those nutrients that you may otherwise lose in a fallow situation.

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I always thought that was interesting how we turn that scavenging nutrients. But, yeah, they're essentially just a temporary hold of those nutrients that once that plant dies or or or we we we terminate and then some way it breaks down and it releases those nutrients back out once the plant begins to break down.

So yeah. I like that. I don't call them fumbles, Ken. These are just remembering as we go, and we'll make it to the end zone. So don't you worry about that.

Show notes are gonna be interesting this week.

They sure will. Yeah. So I guess Ken, the other thing, I mean, you use these in your backyard. So are are you noticing any difference between, like, when you have put in a cover crop in your yard, and maybe specifically, you're doing cereal rye in a portion. Correct?

In your yard. You crimp that down. Do you notice anything different the next year when you're growing stuff? So I

don't I don't have an area that I or if I have an area that I that I don't put in, to cover crops since usually because I planted garlic or I wanna put some early spring crops in there. So it's not necessarily an apple to apples more apples to oranges comparison. But as far as plant growth, I haven't seen necessarily any negative, growth to it. You know, with the way we're using it as as kind of a mulch, you know, we have a lot fewer weed issues. The the stuff I I crimped this year is still there.

My instead of before we were doing this and just had bare ground or or trying to bring in straw or something like that and not getting very good coverage, You spend in a sometimes a couple hours a week, weeding. Now it's 15 minutes, if that, a week. You just kinda go through real quick. And while you're harvesting, oh, there's a weed, pull it up real quick. So that's been the big difference for us is just the reduction of weeds that we haven't.

And it took the the 1st year, there's still quite a decent amount popping up. And now that we've done it for 3 or 4 years, we're really getting that kind of that weed suppression. And this says as we figure out how to to seed it better and and little trial and error and all that.

Well, I guess when we think about what types of cover crops we can look at as gardeners, I mean, I I have my personal favorite, and that's the ones where I don't have to do anything other than throw the seed out. Like, the nice thing about clover is you can throw that seed out. You really don't have to do anything. It'll just sprout. Like, you can maybe, take your leaf rake or something and sort of scratch it in a little bit to the soil surface, but you oftentimes don't even need to do that.

Just have to make sure that it's getting plenty of water and it'll sprout and grow clover. I mean, that's pretty nice, but probably my favorite ones are the ones that will die on their own. I don't have to crimp or spray or till or do any of that. And that's namely, you know, I think we call that the winter kill. And so, I have used these in the past.

These are predominantly again, it's those winter peas or peas, oats, also will winter kill, and then those tillage radishes will also winter kill. And so really those three types. And I think you can intermix them. The the tillage radish, I don't usually mix with with them. A lot of times I'll throw the tillage radish somewhere where it's new, a new planting bed, a new spot somewhere.

Maybe I'll put potatoes there the next year. I want to kind of break that soil up a little bit more extensively than than like a pea could, or or the wheat could or the oats, I mean. So yeah. I I like the the winter kill types. I I sow them in the fall, pretty much right underneath my tomato plants.

And then that frost comes along, rip out the tomatoes and peppers, and then I have a nice cover crop already underneath, that gets that's, going. And usually it takes a pretty hard frost to then eventually kill them, which then leaves me with a nice mulch then that following year. So good weed suppression, got roots in the ground, protecting the soil. I'm checking all my boxes. So, yeah.

That's my preferred one. Do you have a preferred cover crop as a gardener?

Yes. We kind of do a mix. So we've got cereal rye, which is kind of the predominant one we have in there. Usually mix in some clover in with it, and then the tillage radish. So we do a mix of those 3.

And a try if I've got areas of bare ground, I'll try to kind of rough that up and I just broadcast it. And usually we still have enough a lot of that cereal rye mulch left over. So I'm just seeding into that. And if it's really thick, sometimes it gets a little patchy. Last year when we were doing it, we got lucky.

We had a pretty heavy rain pretty much as we were finishing putting the seed in. So it all got watered in really well. So we had really good establishment this past year. Other years, we've done it, you know, haven't gotten a good soil contact or it, you know, didn't get into the soil as well. So it was kind of patchy.

So, again, kind of playing around with that, scratching that soil surface. You know, if if people were wanting to do this, you could get a seeder, and put it in there or lightly till. But I would argue if you're doing a lot of tillage, you're necessarily defeating the point of cover crops, but you don't doing these cover crops, a lot of times just try to reduce that soil disturbance. So, you know, do that lightly. Don't do it real deep to get those in there.

And so, like, the tillage, that's that's a winner kill on that is 1. It's usually hard frost or 2. And it does not smell particularly good for a week or 2 after it dies. It's a little sulfury. So you've been warned.

And the clover and the and the rye will will survive the winter. Usually, at the cereal rye, you just have these little tufts. And then spring as it warms up, it it takes off and it'll end up being 5, 6 feet tall, by the time we terminate. And then I've gotta go in, and terminate that, which is a little more work. You know, you could kill that really anytime, but I like to do it by by crimping so you have to wait until it starts flowering.

Because if you crimp it before that, it'll pop back up most of the time. So you've got to wait to to really kill that off at the right time.

Okay. Yeah. And I think that's that's the really hard thing for a lot of gardeners is we're gonna tell you to put these in and then you gotta kill these plants. So it's really hard for some of us to do. So maybe that's why I like it when winter does it for me.

But it is important though, especially as we get into more of those green manure type crops, more of those spring to summer type cover crops, where they are going to potentially be able to complete a life cycle. They are going to be able to reach reproduction, which is seed production. And if you don't like if we take buckwheat for example, if you don't which is a very nice cover crop, it's very attractive to pollinators, But if you don't want your garden to be just a stand up buckwheat for the next decade, you have to terminate that plant before it finishes flowering, before you get into that seed production phase. Not only that, but that plant has also photosynthesized, it scavenged up nutrients. So it's it's holding a lot of energy within it, and it's going to use a lot of that energy when it gets to that seed production phase.

So, you know, you're you're gonna maximize at least some of that that investment in that plant if you terminate it once you hit flowering. And it it does also kinda depend upon the type of cover crop you're dealing with. So, you know, this is a generalized statement, you know, to terminate them before they flower. But, you that we're just wanting to make sure we communicate. For some of these, especially like buckwheat or phacelia, that's another one that can be quite aggressive.

I've also used borage, or in in the landscape, which is is more of like an herb. But we used it, in in part of our cover crop mix. And then we've had borage everywhere because we didn't terminate it. We let it go because, I mean, it's a very pretty blue flower, and who wants to get rid of a blue flower because we love the color blue when we can find it in the garden. And and now we have it everywhere, and we don't want it everywhere.

So yeah. Terminate it.

And then if you're doing a mixture, which I would argue, you know, a lot of times mixtures are going to be the best because you got multiple plants that are going to give you multiple benefits for that. But for mixtures, you know, if you've got that, you need to terminate as soon as that first one is ready. So that's whatever it is. You know, if if one of them is ready, that needs to be terminated. You have to terminate everything.

So you may lose out on some of the potential benefit. All of you may not realize all the benefits. You're gonna get some of them still. But making sure you're terminating so you don't end up with a headache down the road. Or silver lining is you got a free cover crop the following year that you may or may not be fighting for several years depending on on what you're doing.

Forever. Yes. Then the in the words of the Terminator, I'll be back, said the buckwheat. Yeah.

Janice, this year I left some of our cereal rye, and I was hoping that I could harvest some of it. But I think the birds came in and ate all of it because I've had none germinate or anything. So

Well, wait till next year. You don't know. You might see something pop up in the springtime.

And then so we can probably just talk about different ways you can terminate, cover crops. And again, this is gonna depend on the crop you pick, so do your homework. And you know, as you're picking these, know, look at the benefits they're gonna provide, when you need to plant them. Are they gonna winter kill or you have to terminate on your own? And then and then when do you wanna terminate?

So you can do it by mowing. If you got a raised bed, that may or may not be practical. Probably looking more at a weed whacker. But you can mow them off. Things like like cereal rye, you can go through and and crimp that.

So what I've got is a 2 by 4 piece of angle iron on it. I have a rope on there, so I just walk through and then kinda crimp stuff down every 8 6 to 8 inches and just walk through the garden. It takes some time. Your leg gets tired. Your arms get tired.

But it it it more or less works. Man, there's, you know, rollers and stuff you can buy. Probably not gonna be using that in the home garden, because you don't have enough space to really warrant that kind of kind of purchase. You can do herbicides. So usually, what I do is I'll crimp and then I'll come back, come through with an herbicide too just to make sure, everything gets killed because I don't wanna have to come back another week and and keep crimping.

So usually, like, a glyphosate, if you can find it, Something like that. Something that you can then replant into relatively soon. So again, read those labels for those restrictions and stuff. If it's smaller plants, you could till that end, plow it under. If you've got really big plants like like with the cereal rye, if I'm getting those get 5 feet tall, I'm not tilling that in.

That's just gonna clog up my tiller and I'll get maybe a foot before I'm unclogging it, and it'll take me all day. So that's an option for some of the smaller things. Or if you're doing like a that cereal rye early in the spring, you could till that underwilled still. Mainly just leaves. It doesn't have the all that lignin in the stems and stuff, and it's easier to break down and and till up.

But, again, you're disturbing the soil. So you've got to kind of balance that when it comes to tilling. I've seen things on tarping. So we get, like, some kind of tarp, usually black tarp, something like that. And usually, you're gonna use, mowing or crimping or something like that and then tarp that to make sure everything is killed.

You leave that on for a couple weeks. Let that heat up and and then smother everything so no sunlight's coming through, to kill that. So a lot a lot of times you're gonna use multiple techniques to terminate, your crop. Because, you know, again, for the for the cereal rye, I can't really go in and spray that when it's 5 feet tall. It's easier to to crimp it and then go in and spray it.

Yeah. I think and also for some of the things I've done, especially the scale and the situation where it is in a raised bed, you know, I can't get a tiller up in that bed. I don't really want to either. I don't wanna be tilling my raised bed as, as as as I can. So, a lot of it was hand cultivation.

And in a 4 by 8 bed, that's not that difficult. Kind of just went through with, kind of a sharp, you know, weeder and cultivated everything, pulled stuff up, flipped it over, and and that's how you know, I I I've done a few of our situations here in raised beds where it's just it's it's too much or too tall, and too much effort to really get any type of tiller in there. You know, maybe and they do make smaller types of tillers or cultivators that are mechanical that you can buy, but and again for if you have like 1 or 2 beds that you're doing this in a backyard, you could probably do it also by hand. You know, so you know, just pull them up, flip them around, knock the soil off the roots, and then you can lay those plants down as as a as a mulch. They'll die and dry out and, go through maybe a few weeks later because some things might have re rooted.

That happened to me. So and and I'm speaking from experience here because when I wanted to do a winter kill crop, it ended up being one of the warmest winters on record. It was like, what, 2017 or something like that? And, we didn't get, you know, a good a good kill on our winter kill cover crop. And so I had to go in and actually just pull them like weeds in the spring.

But it still worked. And it worked great. Actually created a very nice mulch for us to then we planted sweet potatoes into those then sweet potato slips. So it it worked out wonderfully, even though, you know, I had to do it by hand.

Get a scythe.

Yeah. Get a scythe. I like the tarp idea too. That'd be a nice nice thing to try. So, yeah.

Garden needs work. That's the way we do it. We do not garden because it's easy. We garden because it's hard. So yeah.

Do those do those cover crops. A little extra work in the spring will benefit you. Give you some less work in the summer hopefully. It's hot hot and gross.

That's right. Gotta get our sweat on. Yeah. Use our calories. So that's what we do.

And then that tomato tastes better. Yes. One question I have, Ken, is let's say we have just maybe we've we've tilled or mowed that cover crop, and we've incorporated some of that green material into our soil. And we plant seed right away? Or is that something where we have to wait?

So if you're tilling, I would definitely wait probably for a week or 2. Let that break down. Because as that stuff's breaking down, it's gonna tie up nitrogen and stuff. So you may have a hard time getting, germination. You know, with with mine, when I when I crimp it, I usually do that.

Wait a week or 2, still before I plant. So usually, yeah, I would factor that into, give yourself a week or 2 before you plant ideally. Let things break down because even even if you're just, you know, like I do crimping it, you still have all those roots in the soil. They'll they're not gonna completely break down, but that that process is gonna start. And I found with that really heavy mulch layer, it's kinda hard to to get through and plant seeds.

Usually, I'm on my hands and knees spreading the the ryegrass apart, pulling out clumps so I can have relatively straight lines. So it's for my situation, it's a lot easier to do transplants. So I'm doing, you know, like tomatoes and peppers and stuff like that. I've done corn in there. I've done green beans and stuff.

And it can be done, but it's it's definitely a little more work than if you just got a bare soil. So if you don't wanna deal with that little extra headache, that may be one where you winter kill and it's been dead and it's been breaking down a little longer or you leave a patch that's a bear that you wanna put seeds onto.

Yeah. I I found that's even true. So using a lot of so I don't cover crop. I really haven't done much of it at home. It's more just been a work thing.

But at home, it's more of a mulch layer. But it's a similar situation where, you know, it's really hard to start lettuce from seed in in mulch. And and I'm sure just as hard in, like, a crimped cereal rye, cereal rye. And so that that's why I grow a lot of lettuce in pots and containers and stuff. You know?

Or I find maybe an area where I can cultivate the soil a little bit better, open it up, you know, keep the mulch off. And so, yeah, I I find I use a lot more transplants, whether it's going into a terminated cover crop or maybe an an alternative to cover crop, like a biodegradable mulch. Whether that's straw, wood chips. I know some people like grass clippings, which I don't like. I don't usually recommend people use grass clippings, but you can use them, I guess.

Yeah. Made up with a few more weeds than you normally would, but

You would. Yeah. And a lot of folks too, forget that they, might treat for dandelions, which that herbicide persists then into your vegetable garden as clippings.

Yes. Maybe we should touch on some of the the drawbacks too then. So, you know, planting depending on how you're planting, that can be a little more more difficult because of all that extra debris, in there. There I guess there is a potential, for some of these, they can harbor pests or something. There's a lot of the cereals that have aphids and stuff on there that may or may not have grown sweet corn or something maybe could transfer, over to that.

I'm trying to think. You know, if you're growing a legume, you know, peas or something like that, there's potentially host pests or diseases that would then get onto your peas or beans, that following year.

I think you're right that with that extra debris, we probably need to adjust Going back to that aesthetics thing, I'm always my brain's always kind of also, how does it look or how does it feel as a gardener? You know, we garden because we enjoy it, it feels good. And we kind of like seeing that and smelling that, and feeling that freshly tilled soil. But with cover crops, like Ken mentioned, you're gonna have more debris. You're gonna it's not gonna be exactly like that that feeling of a blank slate, because we have there's there were once plants there just a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. There's there's stuff on the ground.

Adjust. We have to adjust to this new aesthetic of how that soil will appear, how it will feel, how it will smell maybe. I think I think soil always smells like soil, but yeah. It'll be different.

Yeah. And and then with that debris, that can also potentially harbor pests. So I'm not I don't know if anybody's ever really looked at this, but, you know, with, like, squash bugs, they like hiding in debris. So So if you're putting if you've had issues with squash bugs and you're putting all this extra debris in hiding places out there, it may may be a little more difficult to potentially control those and and pumpkins and stuff like that. I've seen in mine again, this is this is anecdotal.

It seems like I have more slugs in my garden than necessarily causing problems on my plants. But when I go in there and dig through it, I've got a lot of slugs, pill bugs, saw bugs, early pollies, as well, whatever you wanna call those. Now I do finally find those occasionally feeding on on the roots of plants. And so, again, I don't think there's any, you know, significant damage or if there is the yield losses. I still got plenty of more than I need.

So then yield loss of, you know, it's not really bothering me. But, you know, if you're on root crops, potatoes, carrots, something like that, that could potentially be a problem. I've seen those occasionally get into those and start eating on those. You get these pits and stuff that opens up for for disease on potatoes and and carrots and things like that. So that's not all, you know, rainbows and and unicorns.

There there could be some potential drawbacks. But I think, in my experience, in my opinion, I think those benefits far outweigh any any potential issues you may have with them.

Mhmm. And I think it's important to know, you know, cover crop is not necessarily a silver bullet. There will be drawbacks. There will be changes. There'll be differences.

But what you're doing is you're you are working on setting up a system or or as best as we can. There's nothing really natural about a vegetable garden, I don't think. But, we are trying to maybe take a couple cues from nature, looking at soil health systems, looking at some of those plant growth systems as well, trying to incorporate them as best as we can, where yeah, we're still going to probably draw on some some insects that are pests, some diseases that might also linger on some of that debris, but yeah, we're trying to set up this the system as best we can. And I guarantee my backyard cover crop gardening system is going to be different than Kent's. So it's really hard to just say like, oh yeah, this is the cover crop you need to grow to get the biggest yield for whatever crop that you're going to eat.

So it's all going to be really different based on soil type, your sun exposures, climate, microclimates, And so What'd you want to get on that? Exactly. So I'd say try different things. Try different cover crops, try different systems, and see what works best in your backyard.

Yeah. And when it comes to, you know, picking these out, you know, there's a lot of resources out there. Purdue Extension has got a pretty good document on, cover crops. What's that called? We can put that in the show notes.

Where do I put that? There you go. It's called cover crops in the home garden. But it's got a nice table there on the different species, you know, how much you plant. So, for example, cereal rye, you plant 2 to 4 ounces per 100 square feet, and their dates are gonna be pretty similar to pretty much the same as Illinois.

So you're planting cereal rye from early August into November. So this is one that's got a really long planting window. Termination options, so they've got chemical till chemical tillage, crimping, mowing. The notes or cautions for that one must be at pollen shed stage for effective mowing and crimping termination. So there's well, that and then they've got 10, 15 on there.

Midwest Cover Crops Council has got a a cover crop selector tool. Right now, it's just for row crops. They've got a vegetable section that's coming. It's been coming for several years. So, but we we can still use the row crop ones, and you can put in I think it is up to 3 three things.

Like, I wanna get these three things out of the cover crops, and that will spit out those different cover crops. They're gonna best fit the those different qualities you want or the things you want to do with. That's weed suppression, soil building, scavenging nutrients, fixing nitrogen, all of those. And then you can get an idea of what what those are, and then you can go see if you can find those. You know, I I get mine from online from garden companies.

You know, they're they're selling vegetables, a lot of vegetable seeds and stuff. A lot of those companies are getting more into cover crops and having more of those available as well. So and a lot of those have good resources too.

Yeah. I'd say, you know, doesn't matter really who you choose. If you want, they have, you know, phones, emails, you can reach out to them. Describe maybe what the three things are or whatever you want to get out of using a cover crop, and they might be able to suggest what species would work best for you and shop around. Look at different companies, see what they all have to offer.

See what might best fit in your situation. One other thing Ken, so you sent this, shared this SARE document also about cover crops for pollinators. But is this so that would be something that you could have growing in a fallow field. This could maybe be something doing producing nectar floral nectar resources in the spring, in the fall. But I'm thinking about summer, when our vegetable gardens are are are are jammed out there, they're producing.

And and I guess the one thing that people have asked me about is, do cover crops compete with our vegetable crops if they're planted nearby? And to me, we're almost we're almost bridging into, and we probably are overlapping into an interplanting type situation, you as we described, sort of with that sweet alyssum in the lettuce. That's more of an interplanting. It's less of a cover crop, I think. But I suppose you could bleed into each other in that regard.

Do you see any situations of competition when it comes to our pollinator cover crops that might outcompete our vegetable plants?

I guess, maybe a potential risk, but there's still gonna be other things following in the landscapes. You're always gonna have that competition. So I guess if you're really and most of our we think most of our crops there, it's not like a tree fruit where everything's blooming and then you're done. So with that, you can go in and if you had something blooming, you could mow those flowers off and then come back out. I mean, I guess that could be an option if you're really concerned.

Would be mow that down or time that so they're not blooming at the same time. But again, because you think about tomatoes, those are blooming for for months potentially.

Yeah.

And then those don't necessarily need pollination. But, yeah, I guess there's a potential, but I don't think it personally, I wouldn't be really concerned about it. I think I've usually we've got a patch of cosmos, in our vegetable garden that we planted. I don't know how many years ago now that just resees and comes up every year, and it's just there. We still get plenty.

It's not a giant patch, but we still get plenty of pollination. We've got a, native plant planting probably 50 feet from our garden. It's all kinds of flowers. We don't have any issues with pollination, whether that's cucurbits, beans, tomatoes, peppers. We still have fine pollination with all of that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. And and maybe the the issue I'm having with some of this is they're calling them sometimes they call them perennial cover crops. To me that's a ground cover. But

From a farming perspective.

I guess so. Yeah. I'm just coming at this maybe from more of a landscaping perspective, or like, oh, so it's perennial so it comes back every year. It's just a ground cover. You're not you're not gonna terminate that or till it, maybe you'll continue to overseed it to keep it going, but yeah.

Yeah. Maybe maybe I'm having a little bit of, just kinda issues with the terminology. The semantics. Yeah. Yeah.

So

And I've never I haven't done cover crops in the summer. It's it's something I've been in a meeting to do. Like, this year, we we expanded the garden a little bit. I just mulched everything. I didn't just because of time, I didn't have time to put cover crop down.

But that's something I wanna try. Yeah. Especially as we kinda take a patch out of production just we've grown there for for multiple years. Let's try some more of these these summer cover crops. We've just done the plant in late fall or late summer fall cover crops.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Well, I guess there's another question that I have gotten before when I've talked about cover crops and I've explained what you do, why we do it, and then someone says, well, why don't you just leave your tomatoes? They're all winter long. Aren't you gonna get the same thing? Ken, why don't we just leave our tomatoes and squash and peppers in the ground after frost?

You can. Probably not the best idea in the world.

You can.

Yeah. You

can do anything.

Yes. You can do whatever you want, but I would not recommend it. So with those, you know, doesn't really matter what the crop is. If you leave that debris behind, a lot of the diseases that we get we'll take tomatoes, for example. A lot of those leaf spots, those will overwinter on plant debris.

So if you leave that out there, all that inoculum, all that stuff that's going to potentially infect your tomato plants the following year is already there. Pests a lot of pests may overwinter on the debris, as well. So you've you're potentially setting yourself up for a lot of problems if you leave that debris in your garden just because all of those those problems are there potentially as well. So so I want to clean that up. Get as much of that out of there as you can because you're reducing probably not gonna get rid of everything, but you're gonna reduce a lot of that that inoculum or those pests by getting those out of there.

Another reason why we rotate, you know, that that stuff's in the soil. We move that further away. It makes it harder for that stuff to infect. So while you can do it, you're you're gonna you're probably setting yourself up for some headaches. Maybe may get away with it for a year or 2.

But as that stuff starts building up, you're gonna see more and more problems probably.

Yeah. And and we're breaking that disease cycle. We're breaking that insect's life cycle. And so that's the important part. And and Ken and I, we kinda did a little research before the show.

You know, it's not really an issue in Illinois. You know, things like nematodes, things like that, where you might use a cover crop as sort of maybe a pest suppressant. You know, something that could, reduce the amount of nematodes like root rot nemat root knot nematode. It's not as big of an issue in Illinois. Nothing that I've really had to deal with.

I think it might be more of an issue down in the southern US. So I don't know much about it, but I think there's some research out there that does show that there are certain cover crops that can help to suppress certain soil dwelling diseases and pests.

Yes. Nematodes are a problem in Florida. I had entire classes just on nematodes. Fun.

That sounds exciting.

They were they were interesting.

Some people are into that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, speaking of of chemicals, again, another, why do we use them? Hopefully, here. So things like cereal rye.

They have they can have those some of those allelopathic chemicals in there that can reduce or suppress, seed germination. So that's another way some of these could serialize the one that comes to mind for that one. There's probably others too. They can suppress some of that seed germination, which is another reason why you'd want to delay your planting and let those chemicals break down so you're not having issues with with germination in your crops as well.

Yeah. Well, that was a lot of great information about cover crops, using them in our backyards, front yards. Yeah. You could use them wherever you want in your yard. Well, the Good Growing Podcast is production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enra.

Hey, Ken. Thanks for hanging out with me as we fumbled our way to a touchdown on cover crops. So thanks for hanging out, Ken.

Yes. Thank you. And another thing, yeah, like you said, it doesn't have to just be vegetable gardens. You can you get a clear patch and you're not ready to plant yet, put a cut for crop in there. So it doesn't just have to be for the vegetable garden.

Exactly. That's getting more popular too. Yeah. More people are just saying, hey, I want to put in a shrub bed, but shrubs are expensive. What can I do in the meantime?

Cover crop that sucker. There we go.

Fumbled across the goal line there.

Made it. Extra point?

And let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. This NFL season coming up. I don't know why we have all the football jargon on our brains, but, oh, well, we will, skip ahead, here, and we will chat about hazelnuts. It'll be a fun topic. It's getting to be chillier even though it's August and feels like September right now, but hey, whatever.

I'll take it. So hazelnuts will be the topic for next week. So listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening, Or if you're watching us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.