by Lisa Giroday, Sandra Lopuch and Sam Philips | Do you currently have vacant spaces or soon-to-be empty spaces in your garden, potentially lying fallow in waiting for your grand “next Spring” gardening scheme? Consider incorporating cover crops into your garden rotation during the down time. Cover crops are plants that help enrich the soil after a harvest and prep for other crops to follow. Timing-wise, September and October are perfect months to sow an array of different cover crops, so it’s time to get busy! Here are four reasons why we love cover crops:

1. It’s in an organic gardener’s best interest to keep their soil as healthy as possible, as healthy soil means healthy plants. Cover crops are responsible for replenishing the soil with nutrients that are then utilized by crops the following season. They can fix nitrogen into the soil and, when tilled back in, add nitrogen (not to mention organic matter, aka soil food) and improve soil structure by eliminating compaction and improving aeration. Plants need oxygen, too!

2. They add that protective layer between the elements and your soil over the harsh winter months. Such a shield helps prevent soil erosion and compaction from Vancouver’s relentless, brutal rains.

3. They can prevent weed seeds from germinating, and will bully out the ones that are already a problem.

4. And finally, cover crops are very important to your garden’s ecology. They provide shelter in winter for beneficial insects, and come Spring, some cover crops (eg. clover) are one of the earliest pollen sources for our rapidly declining and desperately in-need bee population. This is reason alone to implement cover crops into your garden. They can also interact with beneficial bacteria and feed micro-organisms in the soil.

This is all awesome, albeit seemingly complex because there are so many different kinds and different functions associated with the variety. So keep in mind that you can use different cover crops in combination to provide various functions. What kinds of cover crops are there and what do they do?

Nitrogen fixers: These cover crops provide much-needed nitrogen back into the soil. Nitrogen must be replenished more than any other macro-nutrient, as it leaches out of the soil with the rain and is essential for a plant’s leafy growth. Some nitrogen fixers include legumes – such as small seeded fava beans and winter field peas – white Dutch clover, and crimson clover, which is a primary source of pollen for bees.

Soil builders: These cover crops grow quickly and add ample organic matter to be tilled back into the soil. This breaks down to provide organic matter to the soil. It literally feeds your soil! These crops provide nutrients to micro-organisms, increase aeration and drainage, and improve soil structure. You can also use the harvested cover crops as a mulch to protect any veggies that are overwintering in the garden.

THE VICTORY GARDENS ARCHIVE

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Victory Gardens is a team of local urban farmers for hire. Lisa, Sandra and Sam help transform tired or underused residential and commercial green spaces into food producing gardens. Their goal is to challenge the way communities use space and to participate in the change needed to consume food more sustainably. For the rest of the growing season, they’ve hooked up with Scout to share some cool tips and tricks on how to get the best from of our own backyards.