ken cohen wrote:


There was an article on this subject in this month's Gardening Which.
The idea was that instead of laying down black plastic sheeting/old
carpet or whatever on bare soil over the winter, you sow the ground to
grow a crop eg. mustard, which will cover the ground, prevents weeds,
nourish the soil, and then in February/March, you simply dig it into
the soil which will then be ready for sowing/planting whatever you
really want to grow.

Sounds like a good idea to me, but what do people think about it?

Ken Cohen


Well several 100 years of agriculture seem to prove it works. Mustard
is just one of many 'cover crops' sometimes rather confusingly called
'green manures' (which to many minds would conjour up a pile of
something green and evolving!-) which protect the soil from the element
and create a microclimate which allows normal soil health to continue
between true crops.

We have used, among others, mustard ( short term, don't use where other
cabbage fam to be planted), phacelia (great for bees), field beans
overwintered, grazing rye.. (HArd to dig in but grat for longer term and
soil improvement) and lupin.. Both the beans and lupins will fix N to
some degree if the correct bacteria are present in the soil. and they
ususally are.

You do need a thick enoguh cover to compete with the weeds and this
won't work for things like Bindweed, couch or tree seedlings;-) It is
meant as a rotation or cover crop on cultivated ground rather than
primary weed mulch which is what black plastic is used for in some
instances
//
Jim