Options for fertility, compost and cover crops

Ways to increase soil fertility, or maintain it at least. With and without living roots through the coldest months.
Sometimes in winter, visitors look at my beds and comment that the soil is bare. This is not the case.

Because with no dig, the soil is always covered with organic matter. Composted material on beds and small woodchip on paths.

In autumn, beds are almost all full of vegetables still growing, In any newly empty ones I sow cover crops, also called green manures. So that there are roots in the soil, for extra soil life and an eventual residue of organic matter.

My top tip: sow mustard Sinapis alba from September to mid October. Then it dies in winter weather and we see examples here, including where garlic is now visible.
Mustard is a Brassica and some gardeners worry, because that then interferes with their rotation. However, with no dig, the soil stays very fertile and disease-free, so I do not worry about that aspect of it.

Another plant I use is broad beans, could also use field beans, both are Vicia faba.
Learn more in my No Dig book https://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/product/no-dig

00:00 Introduction
00:44 A bed with a cover crop of mustard, killed by frost
01:03 Planting garlic with the mustard
01:51 Broad beans and peas as cover crop, on my dig/no dig trial beds
03:13 Harvesting broad bean tops and pea shoots
03:26 Another bed of broad beans sown in September - not for overwintering
03:59 My preferred option for overwintering beds - mulching with compost
05:35 Winter job - a very light raking of the surface
05:51 Using homesaved seeds for cover crops
06:02 My No Dig book and online courses

Filmed 20th February at Homeacres, Somerset UK by Edward Dowding. Zone 8 climate near the Atlantic Ocean.

See my website for details of reducing weeds https://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/education/weeds

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#covercrop #covercrops #nodig #broadbeans #mustard #overwintering

Видео Options for fertility, compost and cover crops канала Charles Dowding