Seeking #Edible #Covercrop

 

There seems to be a fair amount of interest these days in edible cover crops. We’ve experimented with a few, most notably sugar beets. (Read about them here !) And some we know are edible but aren’t practical to eat, like barley. Finding a cover crop that is both effective  and  marketable has been a challenge.

 

 

 

We’re taking another stab at it with daikon radishes. We’ve been very pleased so far. They grow very rapidly, and seem to be able to out-compete weeds. The deep tap roots are great for getting down into the soil, and they are reputed to give some nematicidal effect once they have been turned under.

 

 

Quick growth also makes them well suited for a market crop. Other crops we have tried as covers need 100 days or more to reach maturity. Inevitably, they will get trampled in the course of orchard operations during such a long period. Daikon radishes only need about 45 days. With a little planning, we can work around that time frame in the fig orchard. (Lemons or avocados might be a different story.)

 

This week we will start to make daikon radishes available to our customers. Like any cover crop, we don’t expect to harvest all of it. A cover crop exists to feed the soil, not the people. But we’re looking forward to being able to add a little variety to our program.

 

Buckwheat!

 

Here’s a quick look at our stand of buckwheat, our first stab at a summer covercrop for soil remediation and enrichment. Part of this area will shortly be replanted to Meyer lemons. Another part of this area will serve as our trial bed for the purple artichokes mentioned a few weeks back. The rest will rotate through some late squash, a winter cover (favas?) and another crop of buckwheat before being replanted next summer.

The rows of buckwheat reflect the hose and sprinkler arrangement for the citrus that will be planted here. The thin areas are the drive rows that will pass between the rows of trees at maturity. Remnants of the winter covercrop of rye are still holding on, despite 10 weeks without water before the new hoses and buckwheat went in. This block also has a little mustard and vetch that survived from the winter covercrop as well. This is a testimony to the water holding properties of a clay soil. Unfortunately, it is too heavy for the citrus trees. We  hope that the intensive covercrop program (along with the intensive mechanical ripping, manure and gypsum) will bring this soil back to top form. It is pretty popular with bees. How many can you spot?