A little over a month ago I wrote a farm happening about seeding cover crops and their many benefits to our farm. Well, that cover crop has reached the stage where it needs to be "terminated" which is a somewhat aggressive way of saying that we need to work that cover crop into our soil before it forms seeds and becomes next years weeds.
In the photo for this weeks happening, you'll notice a bunch of little white flowers which are the flower of the buckwheat plant. Just a few days after that the buckwheat will start forming seeds so we want to make sure it doesn't get a chance to do that. On our farm we usually till in or mow down our cover crops to terminate it. In this case, I'm tilling it in because we've planted a second cover crop over this that will keep our soil covered until winter.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, cover crops offer us many benefits on our farm including reducing or eliminating soil erosion, suppressing weeds, adding organic matter to our soil and attracting beneficial insects. Cover crops play an integral role in our soil fertility and help us to leave the land in better condition than the year before.
