Heart of the Garden

What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s an anemic cover crop!

I planted winter rye as a cover crop (a bit late in the season – mid-November) even though I plan to build (or rather HE will build) raised beds in Spring (even though he’s busy rebuilding our falling-down house.) So I ordered winter rye seeds because it supposedly fixes the nitrogen in the soil. But according to Johnny’s Select Seed’s cover crop chart, it DOESN’T. But it should keep weeds down. IF I PLANTED IT RIGHT! It looks like a half dead lawn. It’s supposed to be much more dense than this. Bah! Next year… next year I will do it right. But it should be easy to till in Spring and I’m going to plop raised beds on top of it anyway.

Might use a mixed cover crop of cowpeas, rye, and vetch next year.