Q&A: What's the point of a summer cover crop?
The Beginner's Garden with Jill McSheehy
Jill McSheehy
4.4 • 734 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2020
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Summary
What’s the point of a summer cover crop? Last year, I used buckwheat as a cover crop in the middle of my season because I had to pull out some diseased squash. I didn’t want my garden to be empty and at risk of more weeds and I wanted to keep my soil healthy. Listen here to find out even more benefits to a summer cover crop!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In today's Q&A, we're going to talk about what's the point of using a cover crop in the summer. |
| 0:06.3 | This was a question that came up in the full season garden master class that so many of you guys |
| 0:11.1 | attended last month, and I thought it was such a good one to share with all of you because you |
| 0:16.5 | may be wondering the same thing. Jennifer had noticed that I mentioned in particular that I used |
| 0:22.1 | buckwheat last year as a short-term crop in the middle of the season, and she wondered why I would |
| 0:28.2 | do that. Well, in context, what I did last summer is that I planted an early planting of squash, |
| 0:35.3 | and then I ended up pulling it up because we had really bad squash bugs last year |
| 0:38.8 | but it wasn't time to plant my fall crops I still had a month or two before it was time to plant |
| 0:43.9 | I was planning on planting cabbage in that space and knowing that I had that amount of time I |
| 0:49.9 | sewed a crop of buckwheat buckwheat is a cover crop that's unlike other cover crops in that |
| 0:56.1 | it loves the summertime. You may be thinking about cover crops when it comes to fall planting and |
| 1:01.6 | overwintering, and there are definitely reasons why that's a good idea. But you're listening to this |
| 1:07.7 | in March and maybe you're thinking, why would I even want to mess with a cover crop? |
| 1:12.4 | Cover crops have a lot of advantages in your garden and I don't think they need to just be relegated to the fall in winter months. |
| 1:19.8 | In fact, buckwheat in particular is one that has given me benefits in my garden. |
| 1:25.4 | And the main benefit that it gave me last year that Jennifer |
| 1:28.6 | queued in on was I had a couple of months there that my soil was going to be bare. I wasn't going |
| 1:35.7 | to be planting anything between my squash and my fall planting. And I know that it's really good |
| 1:42.2 | to keep plants in the soil. |
| 1:44.4 | We're learning more and more about beneficial fungal networks that survive on plant roots. |
| 1:50.0 | And so when you take all the plant roots out of the soil and you leave it bare, those fungal networks don't have anything to colonize on. |
| 1:58.0 | And by planting buckwheat in that area, I was able to continue to support the |
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