Cover Crops for the Home Garden

This garden guide describes how to choose a combination of cover crops that will provide your soil with what it needs—more nitrogen, more tilth, more protection from eroding rains, or all of these things.

Garden soil can be enriched by judiciously planting it to buckwheat, berseem clover, soybeans, oilseed radish, or oats, either before the garden crop has been seeded or after it has been harvested, or else by planting these same crops successively—as many as three in a season—in a portion of the garden reserved for cover crops alone. This publication will help you make the best use of your garden space while using cover crops and combine cover crops in order to accomplish several goals simultaneously (6 pages; 2012).