Cover Your Soil to Save the Bay
Planting a cover crop in your garden is good for the soil. It also contributes to improving the quality of Bay waters. Soil should never be exposed to rain and wind. Most of the brown, muddy water you see while boating on the Bay is colored by soil that has washed from adjoining lands or streams.
As soon as you finish gardening in late summer and fall, plant winter rye in your garden. Winter rye is a great scavenger plant because it absorbs all available nutrients and stores them in roots and stems. Since it is deep-rooted, it absorbs nutrients that have leached down in the deeper soil, and its roots help to fracture the hardpan soils created by repeated plowing or rototilling. Its roots are rich in lignins, fibers that are slow to decompose and that improve soils making them more friable, thus more suitable for growing plants. Then, when the roots, stems and leaves of rye plants are plowed or rototilled into the ground, they decompose, providing nutrients to the plants in your garden next season. In other words, cover crops, often called green manure crops, are the ultimate in nutrient recycling and the best in preventing the loss of soil and nutrients by wind and rain.
The complaint that I hear most often from gardeners who have tried winter rye as a cover crop is that it is difficult to turn under in the spring because it makes very dense vegetation. This is a self-inflicted problem because those gardeners have applied too much seed. The application rate of winter rye seed to establish an effective cover crop is one to one and a half pounds per 1,000 square feet. This information is often printed on the package, but who reads directions?
Mow the winter rye before plowing or rototilling the garden, and you’ll achieve good incorporation of the chopped stems and roots with one or two tries.
It takes approximately two weeks for the decomposition to start releasing nutrients, so I advise preparing the soil two to three weeks in advance of planting. The soil will be exposed during this short period, but the roots will help retain it. What’s more, microorganisms will actively be fixing any available nutrients in their effort to decompose the new organic matter.
Topsoil is a precious commodity and natural resource. Keep the soil where it belongs and out of Bay waters.
Ask Dr. Gouin your questions at [email protected]. Please include your name and address.