One of our customers is experimenting with covercrops in their landscaping and I thought you would all enjoy their pictures and story. The following is posted below with permission from Chris from his blog, The Urban Dirt Farmer.
According to several sources, Buckwheat is a very good ground cover/soil builder.
After learning that the buckwheat these sources spoke of was not the character from the Little Rascals, but rather some sort of plant that grows in the ground, things made a little more sense.
Buckwheat is a fast growing, drought tolerant, heat resistant cover crop. Additionally, it builds soil and forces out weeds. We planted in early July and it was over 100 degrees for several days in a row.
Here’s what we did:
1. Tilled up the entire front yard with a tiller. It took all day, but beat the alternative of walking on it for a few days with those spiky shoes your dad had to aerate the lawn when you were a kid.
2. Took the seed mixture (Buckwheat/Cowpeas) we purchased from Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply, followed the instructions and then spread them with a seed/fertilizer spreader.
3. Used a rake to even out the dirt and at least partially cover the seeds.
4. Watered 3 times a day for the first two weeks.
After one day, you could see the seeds sprouting and putting down roots. After a week, the plants were all about an inch or two inches high.
Uh. So our front yard has some buckwheat in it. This is after about 4 weeks of growth. The highest plants are about 3′ tall. The stuff that gets more shade isn’t as robust. Here’s another picture from further back.
So the stuff is really blowing up. There are a few bald spots which we re-seeded yesterday to help fill in.
It also just so happens that our next door neighbor is a bee keeper. I’m not making this up. She said that her bees are now off the sugar water (literally) and using our front yard. This is great news because bees are important to human life and stuff. Here’s a photo of me in the front yard.
The plants have these teeny tiny white flowers that the bees actually prefer to larger blooms for some reason.
Say cheese Buckwheat!
Oh, own it, Buckwheat. Give me some emotion! Make love to the camera!
We have another part of our property that was just beat to hell when the house was being built. The ground got so compacted that it looked like it’d never grow anything again. It was another one of those things I didn’t take a picture of, but the following photo reenactment sums up what it looked like:
We had a similar mission to our front yard: build soil and prevent erosion. Because this side yard area is covered with trees and due to the abundant shade, buckwheat was not an option. My wife, who likes to read, figured out that the perfect ground cover would be Strawberry, or Palestine, Clover. It is heat tolerant, builds soil well, grows moderately fast, and can even be mowed if one so desires. The seeds were again purchased from Peaceful Valley. These things look like poppy seeds, but sadly can’t be made into street-grade heroine. We again tilled up the ground (hard in spots where there was just bare limestone, but I did my best to ruin the blades on my tiller) and then planted. Here’s what it looks like after three weeks:
Now bear with me for a sec. Please understand that this used to look like a scene from the 70’s D Movie Cannibal Holocaust. Allegedly the clover is supposed to grow quite thickly once it’s established. Here’s a closeup of the little guys:
They are a little slower growing than I’d like, but they are getting the job done. They stand up to being walked on and stuff (like when I have to move the sprinkler and whatnot). This will hopefully be our default ground cover once we decide what to do with our overall landscaping plan.
