The winter session is upon us with nice cold weather to usher it in. Our winter plantings are coming along well, while on the rest of the farm the cover crops are greening up the landscape nicely. For the winter boxes, you can expect a similar mix to last year, with kales, collards, leeks, fennel, beets, winter squash, dandelion, arugula, curly cress, escarole, cilantro, dill, parsley, radicchio, as well as broccoli and cabbage later in the season. In addition to apples, we’ll bring in some goodies from our friends Steve Marsalisi (lemons and limes), and Phil Foster (like this week’s celery root). It’s shaping up to be a good winter!
Those of you who’ve been with us for awhile are familiar by now with cover crops and what they do for the farm, but for those who are newer to us, I’ll explain the general concept of a cover crop again.
A cover crop is grown not for harvest but to improve the soil, outcompete weeds, and prevent erosion during the winter rains. Our winter cover crop is generally a mix of bell beans, vetch, peas, and oats. The legumes (peas, beans, and vetch) are nitrogen-fixers. They have a symbiotic relationship with tiny bacteria on their roots. The plant captures nitrogen from the atmosphere and the bacteria sequester the nitrogen in little nodules on the plant’s roots (see picture at right). The tall, strong cereal grains we plant along with the legumes gives the delicate stemmed peas and vetch scaffolding to climb. Sometimes our cover crops grow to over 6 feet tall. When we mow down the cover crop in spring and turn the plant matter into the soil, the organic matter from the plants nourishes the soil as a completely natural fertilizer with nitrogen and myriad other nutrients.
It’s particularly important to get cover crops in on the sloped parts of our farm before the first heavy rains because the cover crop also serves the purpose of holding the soil in and preventing erosion. This year we were particularly attentive to this task and had all of our slopes seeded and watered into cover crops before the first rains fell. We do not want to be caught without well-established cover crops in an El Nino year.
A third and also very important function of cover crops is to lessen the weed pressure. As organic farmers, dealing with weeds is very expensive. Weeds are a constant pressure and can stunt the growth of our crops if they are allowed to get out of hand. A thickly sown cover crop can be a great boost to prevent weeds from growing and going to seed during the winter months. Lessening the “seed bank” of weeds year after year is an investment in our 
farm’s future.
In short, investing in good cover crops is vital to the sound functioning of our farm and to growing good vegetables the rest of the year. As a bonus, they add beauty to the landscape and provide flowers for pollinators through the winter months.
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