When I decided to go "no till" back in September 2021, I knew there were parts of the garden where the soil (dirt) just really wasn't very good. It is a clay/silt soil with low organic content, and even worse, parts of the garden were heavily compacted when I had our cellar installed and had some tree-trimming done back in spring of 2020.
Ideally, I could have just put a good layer of compost on my rows, and let the earthworms do the work of incorporating that into the dirt. But I don't have enough compost to do that. I decided my next best bet would be to try cover crops.
I didn't have very good luck with my cover crops last summer (the only exception was the buckwheat and sun hemp, which both grew very well!). I got my cover crops planted too late, and they had just sprouted and started to grow when the dry weather hit. They didn't make it. I ended up covering parts of the garden with a billboard tarp just to keep the grass from taking over.
By late summer I had decided to rebuild my raised rows so they were wider and flatter. As I worked on that project, I also planted my fall cover crops.
- I used daikon radish in three of the new raised rows, and as I finished relocating the dirt to build out the rows, I added winter rye and hairy vetch. In a fourth row, I planted some oats from seed I saved last summer, along with some fava beans seed I had saved last spring.
- I planted lentils from a bag bought at the grocery store on the Hügelkulture bed, then went back later and added some winter rye and hairy vetch to the edges.
- I planted daikon radish and crimson clover in the east rows of the garden.
Happily, the cover crops have all done very well this year. The daikon radish and lentils grew well into the winter, but were finally killed by the repeated cold weather. The winter rye, the vetch and the crimson clover didn't put on much above-ground growth during the winter but apparently the roots were busy growing, because when temperatures warmed just a bit, the above-ground parts took off growing like gang-busters! Once the winter rye hits "milk stage" and the crimson clover is nearing the end of its bloom, I'll cut everything off close to the ground and leave it on the rows as mulch.
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| My wild cover-cropped jungle garden on April 9, 2024. Yes, there are rows there.... |
But despite the fact that the my garden is the way it is right now because that's how I decided it should be, no matter where I look in the garden, I almost feel overwhelmed and frantic.
You see, not only have several of the rows been overgrown by my cover crops, I intentionally left the winter weeds as food for the early pollinators. They were very pretty in full bloom, but now that they're past their prime I have to try really hard to resist the urge to pull them all up.
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| Winter weeds, primarily Red Deadnettle and Henbit Deadnettle carpeting the garden behind the cellar. |
My Brussel's Sprouts stayed alive all winter, but never made a single sprout. But when I saw that they were going to bloom, I left them too. More food for the early pollinators.
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| Yellow flowers in the foreground are Brussel's Sprouts while the one plant a couple of rows over is the only purple-top turnip that survived the rabbits. |
The rabbits nibbled on the crimson clover all winter, but once we had a few warmer days, it started to grow so fast that I guess even they couldn't keep up. I noticed the first flowers a couple of days ago.
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| Two rows of crimson clover, just now starting to bloom. |
And the back part of the garden by the berry plants is such poor dirt that I am not even going try to grow anything there for a while yet. I just planted it as one big winter rye patch and plan to follow that up with mix of purple hull peas, sunflowers and zinnias.
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| Large patch of winter rye, with some volunteer hairy vetch mixed in. |
I'm not a "neat and orderly person" - I'm actually the opposite of that. "Messy and disorganized" is me on my best days.
But traditional gardening - the gardening method I grew up with - dictates that a garden is supposed to have neat and orderly rows of plants with clear walkways between them. What has really surprised me this spring is that the "messy and disorganized" state of my garden has bothered me more than I ever thought it would.
I keep having to remind myself of the purpose for the cover crops, and the long term goal. "Remember why you planted them," I keep telling myself. "They're almost finished and will be gone soon - just be patient."
And on the recent warm afternoons, a walk through the winter weeds and the cover crops underscores for me just why "messy and disorganized" is the right choice for my garden at this moment in time.
It is still a garden I reckon. It's just not yet ready to have order imposed on it.
