Garden Cover Up Seed Mix (Cover Crop)

Garden Cover Up Seed Mix - the Secret to Amazing Gardens

Planting a properly selected cover crop mix can seem like magic for your garden. Weeds are pushed to the edges, soil fertility greatly improves, organic matter and carbon content increases, air and water channels open up, erosion dramatically decreases, soil moisture improves, biological life in the soil increases, and beneficial insects arrive, chasing destructive and pest insects away. 

Cover crops are grains, grasses and legumes (such as peas) often mixed together to support and enhance each other to improve soil health.

All of these improvements are the result of planting a diverse species mix of cover crops, carefully selected for their contribution to improving the soil as a whole while supporting each other. This is the best choice for the majority of gardens for a drastic, noticeable improvement next season. 

Through research, we are learning that soil – and the garden environment – is much more complex than we ever imagined before.

Our gardens are more like the network of nerves and synapses of a brain or nervous system, with multiple species communicating with each other through organic signals. Some researchers have gone so far as to describe a healthy, fertile soil environment as a complex living organism made up of billions of other living organisms, each aware of the other and working together. 

Legumes in the mix 

Crimson Clover – Annual legume, used as a nitrogen fixer, soil improver/builder, erosion preventer, ground cover and for forage. In areas of freezing winters, clover will be frost killed while in warmer winter areas it will need to be mowed or weed whacked to kill it.

Field Pea– Annual legume, valued as a high nitrogen fixer, weed suppressor and forage that creates a high root mass, adding organic matter to the soil. Excellent soil improver, and good erosion control, weed suppression and grazing choice. Quick growing in a short time frame.

Hairy Vetch – Annual legume used to fix nitrogen, suppress weeds, loosen and condition topsoil and reduce erosion while improving soil organic matter and carbon content. One of the only legume that provides an allelopathic residue, hindering the germination of many weeds the next season.

Grains in the mix

Cereal Oats – Annual grain used to suppress weeds, prevent erosion, scavenge excess nutrients, add biomass and as a nurse crop. Oats are also an excellent nurse companion crop to legumes, increasing the fertilizer and nitrogen fixing values.

Cereal Rye – Annual grain used for erosion prevention, soil structure and drainage improvement, adding organic matter to soil, weed suppression and excess nutrient scavenger. It provides an allelopathic residue which hinders the germination of many weeds the next season, like oats.

Buckwheat – Annual grain providing a quick soil cover and stabilization, weed suppressor, pollinator and beneficial insect nectar source, topsoil loosener and low fertility soil rejuvenator. It also has an extensive root system, bringing up deep nutrients to the surface, encouraging beneficial microorganisms, reducing soil diseases and provides an allelopathic residues like oats and rye.

Growing Instructions

Lightly broadcast seeds and work into the top half inch of moist soil, or cover with 1/2 inch of mulch or compost. Water to equivalent of 1 inch of rainfall per week until seedlings become established.

Planting Rates

These rates will give a thick cover crop for maximum weed suppression and soil benefits.

• 1 lb will seed approximately 200 sq. feet of garden beds
• 8 oz will seed approximately 100 sq. feet of garden beds

Learn More

• Cover Crops - Better Soil in a Month
• Planting Cover Crops for a Better Garden
• Cover Crops Beat Garden Weeds
• Cover Crops FAQ
• Which Cover Crop is Best for Me?

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