Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just starting out, integrating cover crops into your late fall gardening routine can yield remarkable benefits for your soil and plants.

Cover crops, also known as green manure, play a crucial role in sustainable gardening by improving soil structure, enhancing moisture retention, and suppressing weeds.

Planting ground cover in fields between cash crop growing seasons is an effective way to prevent farmland from losing soil carbon from erosion, a factor that’s underestimated in considering the ...

Certain cover crops can help control pests, such as the mustard plant, which controls harmful nematodes. Below the soil, legumes — plants in the Fabaceae family — fix nitrogen.

A field planted with cereal rye, one of the most common cover crops in Iowa. Photo by Ally Larson/Iowa State University. AMES, Iowa – Planting ground cover in fields between cash crop growing seasons ...

While cover crops modestly increase soil carbon, the reduction in erosion is a separate benefit. Globally, cover crops could reduce soil carbon erosion by 25%, with a 20% reduction in the central U.S.

Cover crops are grown before spring crops in a rotation that alternates winter and spring crops. “That way we’re growing six crops in four years – four harvested, two grazed.

Farmers manage crops, maintain equipment, and market products, often while balancing a second job and family demands. Adding a dispute with a crop insurance company is the last thing farmers need.

Cover crops are a wide range of plants that can help ward off weeds, ... Customers line up to buy produce from the De La Mesa Farms booth at the Proctor Farmers Market on Aug. 10 near Tacoma.

Cover crops help avoid soil erosion and runoff. Gov. JB Pritzker is proposing a 31% funding cut to a program that helps offset the cost for farmers.