Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... For an Earth-friendly garden, keep a succession of plants in the soil by planting cover crops. These are plants grown to improve the soil rather than for ...

Farmers see a variety of benefits when using cover crops in their fields and home gardeners can do the same. “Having living tissue, living plants on the garden the whole year increases soil health, ...

As the cool weather of autumn approaches, now is the time to start planning for cover crops in the garden. Depending on what’s growing in your garden, you may have a short window to get cover crop ...

While farmers plant millions acres of plants like rye and clover to boost soil health and crowd out weeds, a cover crop does the same thing in the smallest home garden. With cover crops, a vegetable ...

Maybe after you finish your vegetable harvest, you mentally say, “I’m done this year,” and wait to start again next year. But a cover crop could benefit you in several ways. By researching now, you ...

Cover crops play an important role in protecting the soil and water when cash crops like corn or soybean are not actively growing. The National Conservation Service promoted the use of cover crops ...

Establishing winter cover crops after or between harvests can be a great way to preserve soil structure, protect against erosion and produce biomass that feeds the soil ecology. However, if you’re in ...

PLYMOUTH NOTCH — Buckwheat used to be called the “lazy farmer’s crop.” It would grow anywhere, the soil didn’t have to be that fertile, and farmers could plant it in June and still harvest a good crop ...

The conventional way that gardeners solve bad-soil trouble is by adding organic matter such as compost, leaves, grass clippings, and/or rotted manure – or bypassing in-ground planting altogether with ...

Conservation methods can help rejuvenate farmland, but the startup cost and uncertain results mean a risk many farmers still aren't willing to take. The University of Missouri Center for Regenerative ...

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service are collaborating on a series of cover crop fact sheets for Iowa ...