Vegetable Gardening (113 page)

Keep garden paths clean.
Try to keep your garden paths as weed free as possible; otherwise, weeds will creep into your planting beds. Try covering the paths with a thick mulch to keep weeds from becoming established.

Make sure the areas around the garden are weed free.
If you're growing vegetables near a field or weedy woodland edge, try to mow a wide strip between your garden and the field so the weed seeds can't blow in as easily. It won't stop all of them, but every little bit helps.

Chapter 16: Surveying Some Cool Farmer Techniques

In This Chapter

Growing plants that improve the soil

Planting schemes that increase harvest and reduce pests

Using the phases of the moon to determine when to plant

People have been growing vegetables for eons — probably since the days of Adam and Eve, though you usually associate them with fruits, not vegetables.

Over the years, farmers, and even gardeners for that matter, have tried almost anything to get better, bigger, and earlier harvests. Some of these techniques, such as planting according to the cycles of the moon, are rooted more in mysticism than in hard science. Others, such as using cover crops and succession planting, are commonsense approaches to farming that are now established practices in modern agriculture. They're also useful techniques for home vegetable gardeners.

In this chapter, you can take a look at some cool farming techniques — some based on fact, some on fancy — and decide whether they'll work for you.

Adding Nutrients and Stability with Cover Crops and Green Manures

A
cover crop
is a general term for any plant grown to prevent erosion, improve soil structure, and maintain soil fertility. Sometimes, you'll hear cover crops referred to as
green manures.
Green manures are cover crops that are used primarily to add nutrients to the soil and are tilled into the soil when they're still green. Green manures are the most useful cover crop for vegetable gardeners.

The advantages of using cover crops are impressive:

They add organic matter to the soil.
By adding this matter to the soil, you improve water retention, aeration, and drainage.

They prevent erosion.
Cover crops prevent erosion by holding soil in place in windy or wet areas.

They loosen compacted soils.
Certain cover crops, such as oilseed radish and bell beans, have aggressive
taproots
(roots that grow deeply into the soil), sometimes reaching 3 feet deep, that help break up compacted soils.

They add nutrients to the soil.
Legume cover crops, such as hairy vetch and crimson clover, through a symbiotic relationship (I scratch your back, you scratch mine) with rhizobium bacteria on their roots, convert atmospheric nitrogen into a type that they can use to grow. The process is called
nitrogen fixing
(see Chapter 7 for more on this relationship). When the cover crop is tilled into the soil, the nitrogen is released for the next crop. Also, taprooted cover crops bring minerals to the surface from deep below the soil.

They help control weeds.
Cover crops control weeds by shading the weed seeds so they can't grow or by just being more aggressive than the weeds. Some crops, such as buckwheat, actually exude chemicals that inhibit weed growth.

They attract beneficial insects.
Many cover crops attract good bugs that prey on garden pests, reducing insect problems on your vegetables.

If you want a healthier, more productive garden, and you have room, include cover crops each year in different parts of your veggie garden. In the following sections, I explain how to select and plant the best cover crops for your garden.

Choosing cover crops

Cover crops can be
annual
(they die after flowering or overwinter) or
perennial
(they regrow each year). For home gardeners, the best crops to sow are annual cover crops. These are easy to maintain and won't turn your vegetable garden into a cover crop garden.

The most useful annual cover crops for home gardeners are listed here. All but the grasses and buckwheat are nitrogen fixing:

Annual ryegrass,
Lolium multiflorum,
is a fast-growing, easy-to-establish grass that grows 2 to 3 feet high. It's hardy to -20 degrees Fahrenheit but can become weedy. Sow 1/2 to 2 pounds of seed per 1,000 square feet.