I’m committed to improving the soil in my spot, a spot which I’ll be stewarding for a long time, I hope. In 2014 I decided to try cover cropping, resized for the urban garden.
Green Manure is one term used to describe planting species which will improve the soil quality. They do this while they are alive by lossening the soil, adding nitrogen to the soil, and preventing weeds, and they do this when they are dead by breaking down and creating first a layer of mulch, and then compost.
Clover, rye, peas, buckwheat… there are many cover crops. I decided to try straight white clover in some beds, and in others a mix of four species from Johnny’s Seeds, billed as their Fall Green Manure mix:
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6578-fall-green-manure-mix.aspx
I threw it down once the main crops were done in a few places. It sprung right up.
By the end of fall it was the only thing left standing in the garden. Come spring, it would be the first to arrive as well.
Once well-established, I simply left it alone and let winter come. In the spring of 2015, when the snow melted, it was still green and healthy under there after all those months. Within a week of early spring weather I had what looked like a nice overgrown lawn back there.
I’ll come back to this in another post, but the idea is to cut it back, till it under, let it decompose, and then wait a few weeks before your regular spring veggie planting. The result should be healthier, more nutrient-rich soil. So far this seems to be a great way for an urban gardener to reinvigorate the soil with new organic matter and nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere, without bringing in large quantities of outside soil amendments.