Makin' Hay

Or more accurately, straw.

What’s the difference, you ask? Well, straw is usually the by-product of a grain crop. In my case, this was winter rye. You might recall that grain crops are grasses, and rye is indeed a grass. It grew tall all winter, and then began to go to seed to produce that grain that makes such delicious bread. I didn’t grow it for the grain, though. I grew it for its stalk. The ‘straw.’

Ok, so what’s hay? Hay is not a by-product, but a product in itself. Hay is often a mix of legumes and grasses, such as alfalfa and wheat, and is used as a dry feed for livestock. This is not to be confused with silage, which is green hay that is compacted into bales and put up ‘wet’ in order to ferment and increase the nutrition, and then is fed to livestock. Confusing?

Rye straw piled up under the apple tree, waiting to be used as mulch

Technically, what I did was grow hay - a green crop of rye and clover (grass and legume) - but I didn’t use it to feed livestock, and I didn’t use it for people food. As I’ve mentioned, I grew it only for the straw.

Why would I do such a thing? In a word: Biomass.

Grain crops - grasses - grow a ton of biomass, both above and below the soil. The above-ground part of the plant can grow many feet in a very short time. I actually reduced the size of my plants several times, to prevent them from setting seed. The first time I chopped them (reducing them by about two feet), they were already five feet tall. Then they grew that same amount back again and I chopped them again a second time. After that, they were slower to grow again, but still put on several inches before I chopped them down the final time. It’s just in their DNA to grow tall. This produces a huge amount of biomass above the ground, which can be used in several different ways.

But grasses also grow an enormous amount of biomass underground. They have vast and complicated root systems, which have evolved to anchor them, and that tall growth, in windy conditions. Think about where grain grows best - flat prairies in the middle of the country, where the soils were formed by ancient lakes, and are loose but nutritious, and there are no mountains around to block the wind. The grain (and other prairie plants) needed to evolve to have very strong roots to support their growth.

a famous illustration of prairie plant roots by Heidi Natura c.1995

What does this underground biomass do? It takes the sugars (made by the plant in the process of photosynthesis) and pumps them into the soil, attracting the trillions of microscopic creatures - bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes - to their roots, increasing the interactions between the plant and the life in the soil. This creates an ecosystem which is incredibly favorable to the plant, providing micro-manure for nutrient uptake, as well as allowing for shared resources between plants. When the above-ground biomass (that is, the actual plant) is removed, that whole underground ecosystem is just there waiting and ready for the next crop. The soil ecosystem has been vastly improved.

This is why cover crops are so valuable. They can provide food for us, food and habitat for insects, and biomass for use in the garden. That biomass is also of great use in the compost.

The compost pile in the chicken run, under the fig tree

As you can see, much of the material that I am not using as straw goes onto the pile in the chicken run. They like to eat the bits of things I throw there, such as the green leaves and stems of the clover, and they find all kinds of bugs to enjoy, too. After the chickens are done scratching around in it, it all rots down into a deeply nutritious soil that I add to my veg beds in the fall, thus completing the cycle.

This whole process is a fun one. A bit of work, yes - but any crop requires a bit of work in order to reap a lot of benefit. It’s taken me a week to remove the covers from the North Garden, separate out the straw, put the rest on the compost, and then plant summer crops. It’s good exercise, and it feels wonderful to bend and stretch and squat and sweat in the warm spring sun. Summer is on the way, and soon this space will be filled with good things to eat, like tomatoes and basil. And I can feel satisfied knowing that I’ve improved the conditions for those crops, and that I’ve made my own organic straw with which to mulch them.

A Tale of Two Garlics

Or rather, a Tale of Two Garlic BEDS.

This year, I didn’t plant as much garlic as I have in years past. The kids are both at college, and while Tom and I are very fond of garlic and cook with it nearly every night, making two portions rather than four has changed my planting schemes considerably (for every crop, not just garlic). I decided to put the garlic in our two fire-ring beds this winter and see how it worked out.

Last summer, one of these beds held basil (a riotous overflowing abundant crop of basil!), and the other held cilantro - which grew, then quickly flowered, and set seed, as cilantro tends to do. Last winter, both of these beds held sweet pea flowers.

I planted the garlic cloves in both beds at the same time this past October. Both get the same amount of drip irrigation. Both have very similar conditions regarding sun exposure, particularly in winter when our chitalpa tree loses its leaves. But the garlic crop in one bed is much greener, and much further along, than the other.

The top bed held the basil, which I either harvested before it had a chance to set seed, or did set seed but hasn’t germinated, because it simply can’t in cold temperatures. The bottom bed has its third or fourth crop of cilantro at this point, because it definitely set seed, and it can germinate well in cooler temps.

The cilantro bed not only looks prettier, full and abundant and rich, the garlic is also further along, taller and greener than the basil bed. The soil in this bed is also darker and richer than the soil in the basil bed.

What’s going on here? It’s all down to the wonderful synergy that happens when two or more crops grow together. One might think that the garlic growing alone would do better - after all, it has no competition for nutrients, light, or water - but that’s obviously not the case.

The bed with both garlic and cilantro is doing so well because the two species are sharing resources. Mycelium (strands of fungi) are connecting between the roots of the plants, and are shuttling resources between the two. Even more importantly, the garlic and cilantro are feeding two different colonies of microbiota in the soil. Each is photosynthesizing and pumping sugars down through their root systems to feed all the microscopic critters, and that means double the food. It’s also likely that specific species show up to eat from the roots of each kind of plant. It’s a beautiful symbiosis that results in TWO great crops, rather than just one.

My guess is that I’m going to be able to harvest the garlic that is growing with the cilantro earlier than the one in the old basil bed. It will be interesting to see if my hypothesis is correct.

Summer in December

Here’s a happy honeybee aiming towards a fully-opened sunflower on the first day of December in my garden. It’s been chilly at night, but the daytime has been beautiful and warm and in the 70s. Yes, this is unusual. Yes, this concerns me. But I must confess it also delights me. I am enjoying the summer blooms in my garden, and the warm afternoon temperatures which are perfect for walking. I think it’s important that we remember to be present, whatever the moment gives us. I can be worried about our place on this planet and happy to bask in the afternoon’s slanted glow. Environmental work can be draining, so let’s take the joy where we can.

The cover crops in my garden also include, at the moment, cosmos. And borage, cilantro, buckwheat. I used our homemade compost to top off these beds, and the seeds that didn’t die in that pile have germinated and are flowering freely. It’s all good. A cover crop can be any crop, and it’s all improving the soil.

A side benefit to these sunflowers growing this time of year is that the goldfinches leave them alone. In summer, my sunflowers are always decimated, the leaves eaten down to the veins. This means the plant can’t photosynthesize and can’t bloom properly. Why don’t the goldfinches do this in winter? It could be that they don’t need greens this time of year, requiring only protein and fat to prepare their bodies for laying eggs. It could also be that most have migrated for the season, and the ones I see around the bird feeder are too few to do much damage.

Hey, maybe I’ll only grow sunflowers in the autumn and winter from now on.

Happy December, everyone.

Change Everywhere

It’s that time of year again, when everything changes fast - the light, the leaves, the weather. We are enjoying fall colors (as much as we can in California) and the increase of ‘cozy’ with the early darker evenings. I’m baking bread again, weekly, and there are lots of hearty soups on the menu. Since it’s just me and Tom around the house these days, we keep it pretty simple when it comes to supper.

I’ve had a few folks ask me about the garden. I decided to plant the entire North section in cover crops, to help improve the soil. I’ve seeded both rye and crimson clover, and there are now other things coming up as well - cilantro, sunflowers, and also some tithonia. These are all seeds I put in over the summer and they never germinated. I just couldn’t keep enough water in the ground to support them. Now that we have cooler weather (and some rain - more on that in a minute), they are all popping up. It’ll be interesting to see what survives the winter frosts.

On the South side of the garden, I amended the soil, then planted: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snap and shelling peas, chard, kale, several kinds of lettuce, leeks, garlic, and spinach. Everything has germinated well (or was transplanted from our greenhouse plugs) and I expect slow growth from now until early Spring. Hopefully we’ll have some winter greens and lettuces, at least.

I’ve recently cleared out some areas in the ornamental beds that just weren’t working well, and have bought some new native plants to fill them. I’m especially excited to try our native California clematis - pipestem clematis - Clematis lasiantha - on our front fence by the driveway. We saw this lovely plant all over Mt. Diablo during our summer hikes, and it always looked amazing in the arid heat.

You may have heard a little something about the ‘bomb cyclone’ and/or atmospheric river we experienced here last weekend. In one 24 hour period, our weather station’s rain gauge recorded 5-1/2” of rain. For us, that is unprecedented. My folks in Orinda had 9-1/2” over that same 24-hour period. Crazy! In front of our house, there is a drain that takes all the runoff from about a quarter mile of road (our neighborhood was designed and built in the 1940s, clearly inadequate infrastructure for today). We (and our neighbors) are careful about keeping it clear of leaves and debris when it is raining, because we’ve had flooding in the neighborhood when the drain is clogged. Tom and I both took very wet and windy walks on the 24th, and enjoyed seeing all the little creeks near our house fill up and run at top capacity. In those conditions, it is easy to imagine the watershed the way it used to be before people lived here, with a broad river flowing down from the Mt. Diablo foothills.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, all this rain put barely a dent in our drought conditions. We need ten more storms just like this one (and frankly, that is highly unlikely to happen) to take us out of danger. However, these rains quenched all the fires in the northern half of the state, so that’s really great news.

As you know, I’ll be graduating in December with my BA in Environmental Studies, an accomplishment 30 years in the making. This photograph was taken from Merritt College, in Oakland. I’m proud to say that I have been hired as an adjunct professor in the Natural History and Sustainability department at Merritt, and I start teaching Urban Argroecology courses in January. Part of my position is a separate requirement to mentor students, particularly those that have been historically underserved by the academic community. I am super excited to get started, and also terrified - which I take as a positive sign that this is a correct new trajectory for me. I will be sad to leave my current internship with Friends of Sausal Creek. I have learned so much in my time with the organization, and forged relationships that I hope will last a lifetime. I still have two months with them, though! Between that, my school load, and gearing up for the new gig, I barely have time to miss my kids. Who, by the way, are both rocking it at their respective colleges. We sure enjoy hearing about their adventures in our weekly phone calls, and we look forward to having them back for the holidays.

How are your winter gardens coming along? I’d love to hear about your urban farming adventures.

Reader Question - Cover Crops

Did you know that you can email me directly if you go to the ‘contact me’ page on this website? I would absolutely LOVE to answer any question you have, and if I can’t answer it, I’ll be honest about that, too. It’s all too obvious that I am running out of things to write about. When I was taking Horticulture classes, I was always learning something new about gardening, or trying experiments out in the lab, and I had lots of information to share. Then I swerved briefly into more general science classes, which still had some good, relatable info. But now I’m fully into my upper division courses, which are all for my Environmental Studies degree and include boring things like data collection and carrying capacities and population control and clean energy. Well, they aren’t boring to me, but they certainly aren’t the focus of this blog, and aren’t as fun to read about as bugs and vegetables and flowers. So I really appreciate questions! They give me a chance to write about fun things and to question my knowledge and opinions of them and of course, that way we can all learn together, which is my favorite thing of all.

This morning I got a wonderful email from a reader named Jill, who lives not far from me: “ I sadly lost most of my garden due to the heatwave and an irrigation issue. I’m looking at cover crops and know nothing about the subject. Do you have any tips or links to places you buy the seeds from. Maybe some simple do’s and dont’s? “ Thank you Jill! Thank you for reading the blog and thank you for this question and thank you for your faith that I can answer it!

Buckwheat, a summer cover crop in warm climates

Cover crops can seem intimidating and confusing, so let’s start from the beginning. What is a cover crop? The simple answer is that a cover crop can be anything you want it to be. The Oxford Dictionary definition is “any crop grown for the protection and enrichment of the soil.” Farmers tend to use specific plants to satisfy specific requirements, which can be very important, especially if you want to grow without inputs i.e. chemical fertilizers. Some plants provide nitrogen, some phosphorus; others attract beneficial insects, and still others provide biomass for feeding animals. Some are grown during the summer, and some are grown during the winter. Some are grown after a specific cash crop, to replenish certain nutrients.

If you’re a farmer, and you’re making a living growing and selling your crops, you’re going to want to know a lot more details about cover crops and how they can be used to save you money. But if you’re a regular home gardener, your needs are different. You want something to improve the soil, attract beneficial insects, look pretty, and feed your compost pile when it’s done growing. Maybe you want to avoid buying soil amendments this year (they’re going to be hard to find, considering how many people are gardening for the first time). Maybe you don’t like the structure of your soil, and you want to improve its water-holding capacities. Maybe you like birds, and you want to feed insects that will in turn become food for the birds. These are all fine reasons to grow a cover crop.

The thing that is most important is that you have a living root in the ground at all times. Now, if you live in upstate NY, you know that eventually that root will likely die, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, and maybe even you time a crop so that it winter-kills and you don’t have to cut it down yourself. If you live in California, however, you can grow different cover crops at different times of the year, year-round. Having a living root in the ground is what improves your soil. The plant harvests sunlight, makes sugars, and pumps those sugars down into the roots and into the soil. This attracts microbiota, tiny creatures that feed on the sugars that the plant provides. In turn, they poop, providing micro-manure to the soil, and they burrow, improving air flow to the roots, and they die, recycling nutrients, and they move a ton of soil, making it rich and crumbly and perfect. If there’s no root in the soil feeding the microbes, then they move on or die off (or become very, very sluggish, waiting for the next influx of food). It’s not the plant that is feeding the soil, it’s the animals that are feeding the soil - the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes - the primary and secondary consumers. When you spread manure or compost on the soil, it doesn’t feed the plant - it feeds the soil life, which in turn form these associations with the plant roots and provide the nutrients the plant needs to thrive.

image credit: center for food safety

So if you look at it this way, any plant can be a cover crop. No matter what kind of plant it is, it is going to continuously pump sugars into the soil and feed soil life, therefore improving your growing medium.

However, some plants need a lot of nutrients. If you’re planning a summer garden full of squash or melons, for instance, you might want a high nutrient load in the soil before you plant them. Why not grow a crop that will also add specific nutrients to the soil? Here is a handy chart, provided by the Organic Growers School, to help you determine which crop you need at which time.

image credit: the Organic Growers School

Don’t worry too much about the seeding rate. I just spread it on thickly, and that does the trick.

I’ve grown many different specific cover crops, and I tend to stick to two - crimson clover in the winter, and buckwheat in the summer. Some years I don’t use them at all. Some years I plant them intercropped with other plants that I am using for food. Some years I grow them alone in specific beds. They’re both great, but both require cutting and removing before they set seed (at least here in CA), or else they will seed everywhere (which is not the worst thing in the word). I’ve also done several mixes, especially in summer, that combine many species to provide many different nutrients. This is actually proving to be best for the soil, generally. If a living root in the ground is good for the soil life, then a wide diversity of roots in the ground would naturally be even better. I’ve also grown winter wheat and oats, which provided me with the best variety of beneficial insects I’ve ever seen in my garden. Long grass is apparently second only to a pond for attracting wildlife, and we saw that firsthand.

Many seed houses sell cover crops, but the best place I’ve found is Walnut Creek Seeds in Walnut Creek, Ohio (I know, it’s a coincidence that my town is also named Walnut Creek). They’re super-friendly, the farmer (Dave Brandt) has pivoted his business from growing corn and soy to growing cover crops, and he is also involved in a lot of research with the NRCS to show how cover crops can save money for traditional farmers, improving crops, soil, water levels, and erosion. Their prices are incredibly reasonable. They also sell specific gardening mixes for the home grower. I’ve used both the summer and the winter mix, and can vouch for them. Mr. Brandt is also one of the first conventional farmers to help develop special seeding equipment to enable farmers to plant their cash crop directly into the residue from a cover crop. He has a lot of videos on his website, and I think they are fascinating. (I have also ordered phacelia from them, by the pound, for early spring seeding in my pollinator gardens. The bees go crazy for it.)

If you’re interested in how soil can be a huge catalyst to improving our planet (and some history on how it’s disappearance has contributed to societal failure), an excellent book is Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life, by David R. Montgomery. If you’re looking for a nice film to help you understand these concepts, look for Symphony of the Soil, which came out years ago and is still one of the best films about soil I’ve ever seen. For a crash course on soil health and how cover crops can be used to improve your land, you can’t do better than Living Web Farms’ series with Roy Archuleta and Dave Brandt - these videos will blow your mind.

If I were Jill, and my garden had been decimated by heat and smoke (mine is pretty sad too, sister!), and if I wasn’t planning on winter food crops, and I wanted to improve the soil, I would plant buckwheat right now. It’ll grow and flower quickly in our late summer/early autumn heat; it’s quite a pretty plant, with lovely tiny white flowers. Around late October or early November, I would cut it down and lay it on top of the soil where it grew. This will provide cover for the soil over the winter. (Studies have shown that it’s better for the soil if you just lay the residue on the top, rather than turning it under.) Or, you can add that residue to your compost pile. I would then plant either a winter mix of grain, clover, peas, and radish (or the mix Dave sells) right into those same beds, and let it grow a bit before the real winter hits us. When it begins to warm up again in January/February, that cover will take off and grow like mad, and you can let it go until you are ready to cut it down and plant your spring crops. This will do wonders for your soil, and you will also be feeding pollinators: Both now, with the buckwheat, when it’s hot and crispy outside and there’s not a lot to eat, and early in spring, when the bugs are emerging from their winter dens and need nutrition, pronto.

Do any of you use cover crops regularly? What’s your experience with them? Do you have any tips for Jill (and the rest of us)? If so, please leave a comment down below. Good luck, Jill! Let me know if you have any more questions.