Cover crops will see gardens through the short days.
“The days get short when you reach September.” Actually, they began getting shorter back on June 21, and a lot of plants can tell the difference. That is when they start preparing for winter, but we will talk about that next month. For now, we can say that the summer gardening season is nearly over, and fall gardening will be starting soon.
Gardening at the Craven Research Center has been about as bad as any other this year; it was just a bad spring and summer for gardens. Our hybrid tomatoes did pretty well, but the heirloom varieties were hit by diseases. The snap beans also did pretty well as did the okra, though it is late. The watermelon planting idea is progressing slowly, but we think it will work. Our thoughts are now turning to the fall and winter gardens. We will use the new hybrid tomatoes for transplants and are looking into the idea of growing some Chinese vegetables for the fall/winter garden. We will still have some idle beds and are going to plant crimson clover seeds as a cover crop.
Which brings us to this month’s topic, which should be interesting both for our active gardeners and the easy chair gardeners. I want to begin with kudzu, the wonder cover crop that saved the South’s depleted fields but gradually became a serious weed. Gardeners will want to avoid the use of kudzu; however, its past use is instructive in the general benefits of planting cover crops.
When I was a student at Mississippi State (1946-50), kudzu was the only reasonable solution for reclaiming the old, eroded cotton field soils. The Soil Conservation Service used to pay farmers to plant kudzu on fields that simply wouldn’t grow anything else. They would furnish free “starts” of kudzu that would gradually spread over fields marred by knee-deep gullies and would crowd out any kind of weed that might be there. After a year or so, you could graze cattle on the kudzu. Later, you could disk it up—using a smart mule that would avoid the gullies—and the field would slowly recover.
ANNE: A quick side note… When my husband and I moved to Chattanooga many years ago, we knew absolutely nothing about the city with a strange name. Many things about our new locale mystified us when we first arrived, not least of which was a local evening news broadcast whose leading story was “Kudzu-Eating Goats are Roaming Missionary Ridge” (or something like that). A recent search on Google revealed some interesting tidbits about those goats. Their effectiveness at controlling Chattanooga’s kudzu problem was undeniable and earned them a feature article in The New York Times back in 2007. At the moment, I’m sad to report, the goats are gone—victims of city budget cuts.
LEON: Kudzu is a legume that fixes nitrogen and provides plenty of soil organic matter. A good stand of kudzu would kill any kind of weed, including shrubs, blackberry vines, and even trees. The vines would simply grow over the other plants and shade them out. To get rid of kudzu, you just needed to turn a herd of goats into it; they would eat it to the ground and then root up the ground for the tubers. But goats are hard to manage, and there wasn’t a good market for barbecued goat.
I have read that the South eventually had over seven million acres of kudzu fields. The wonder crop gradually became a weed, creeping into pine forests and covering even large trees. Luckily, kudzu is a full-sun plant that couldn’t grow in the shaded part of a forest; but it could gradually turn what used to be a forest into a full-sun field.
Kudzu probably originated in China, but it was grown and used extensively in both China and Japan. The older stems were used for making baskets and the tubers were used as starches in many kinds of food. (I say “were” because I don’t have any current information.) An extract from the leaves was said to be used as a treatment for alcoholism and for hangovers. I could tell more tales of kudzu, but let’s move on to more useful suggestions for our winter gardens.
Back when I was working for the horticulture department, I was always reminding people that something has to be grown in a winter garden. If you don’t plant something or use a mulch, weeds will grow and produce seeds that will make gardening much more difficult.
My choice for a winter cover is crimson clover, planted in September. It will grow quickly and, before cold weather sets in, reach knee height, shading out the weeds. It makes beautiful flowers in early spring and then dies, leaving a good mulch on the soil surface. If you want to plant an early spring crop, you can just cut the clover off at ground level and leave the cuttings as a mulch.
There are several other legumes that are good cover crops, but I have a friend who spreads turnip or mustard green seeds out in September. As the plants grow, he cuts the tender leaves off to eat as vegetables. The plants eventually flower and produce seeds that won’t germinate until the next fall. It’s not a great system, but it works for him.
My point is that many people get tired of growing a garden “year-round,” so they should just plant a cover crop or cover everything with leaves and grass clippings. If you do want a winter garden, you can plant carrots, garlic, leaf lettuce, mustard greens, turnips, or beets in late September or early October. Deciding just when to plant is a gamble because you never know what the weather will be like.
Notice that we are still planting on raised beds, so you should put some sort of mulch in the water furrows; pine needles are good, but any leaves work pretty well. Some soil will keep eroding from the raised beds, but the particles will be trapped by the mulch and, with luck, only clear water will run out of the garden and into the grassy area below. Once or twice a year you will need to shovel the soil and organic matter out of the water furrows and back onto the raised beds.
Now, a short word to the lazy chair gardeners: if you have been following my instructions in your imagination, you will have a nearly weed-free imaginary garden with raised beds and water furrows. But the hot sun and rains will have reduced the soil organic matter to a very low level. Don’t try to plant a fall or winter garden. Scratch the soil a little and plant crimson clover on the beds and spread pine needles in the water furrows. By next spring you will have an excellent garden with enough fertilizer (you put some out last month) and plenty of organic matter. The great thing about lazy chair gardening is that the weather is always predictable and you avoid the hassles of ordinary working gardeners!
Next month we will talk about how plants know when to prepare for the winter, but not how cold it will be.
ANNE: Throughout the summer season, when disease and drought hit our garden hard (and when our home renovation crew kept cutting power to our automatic irrigation system), Leon was quick to remind me and my husband that even the most experienced gardeners were challenged by the unfavorable conditions this year. So as our corn and tomatoes burned to a crisp and our cucumbers turned yellow en masse, it did make us feel somewhat better that others were struggling through the season, too.
That said, there was plenty to celebrate! Our early season tomatoes and cucumbers were just right and made delicious summer salads. We gave some beautiful eggplants and beans to neighbors and family members, and the fresh bell pepper and okra fit right in to my husband’s gumbo recipe.
P.S. We recently discovered from a consultant at the Burden Center that our backyard may be the only seed source of Fontenot okra, so Leon is teaching us how to preserve some of those pods and re-start the seed source. No pressure or anything.
