Many gardeners grow cover crops to be turned under in the spring thereby using the cover crop as a green manure. Rye Grass has an extensive fibrous root system. The roots of an adult rye plant were once counted and measured. It bore approximately 14 million root segments totaling an unbelievable 380 miles (630 kilometers) in length. Our farm plants (drills) rye every September and then turn it under the following May. - Millet

I like this subject of cover crops and green manure crops.
We do not always utilize what we know of this technology
in our crop rotation patterns to help for soil reclamation,
soil improvement and using crops such as Vetch and Clover
for areas to improve watershed and help for erosion control.

Below are two pretty good links.

Cereal Rye

http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/cgi-bin/CCrop.exe/show_crop_12

UC SAREP Cover Crop Resource Page

http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/ccrop

Jim

we moved to a clay soil area after having nice loam, so we built raised beds and got bagged soil (bad idea!) but were improving it.... I need to re-seed my rye, we didnt get enough rain to make it all come up right after planting. but it stays nice and lush green almost all winter. i just pulled it in handfulls in the spring as I wanted to plant and used it as mulch. decomposed right in.


were also composting chicken manure with straw from my new "children" will also assuredly help have a better growing season next year.

Jim, I spent over an hour looking at the second cover crop link you posted. The pictures were really something to see. We plant rye usually in the third week of September, and Yellow Clover in the spring. I have two acres of grapes that rye is planted in-between the rows every year. I also have a five acre parcel that has never been planted in twenty years. However, every fall the plot was planted into rye and cultivated under every May/June, then left in fallow during the summer. This year my son planted hard red winter wheat on it along with all of the other winter wheat his plants. Will be very interesting to see the bushels per acre off of the 5 acre plot. However, as this area is wheat country, any rye crop must be turned under BEFORE it develops a seed head.- Millet

I've always liked using a cover crop in between the rows,
planted in the middles, for the Fruit Trees. At one time
doing this was thought to be a no-no, that people wanted
to have clean middles and then some reports came out
as to the benefits of the clean middles, knocked down
through tillage or from herbicides as opposed to having
vegetation. I liked the feeling of not having to fertilize
our Fruit Trees as much or as often as we would have, had
we not grown the cover crops. Mostly purple or Hairy
Vetch and some Clovers are still used for erosion control
around here, so much so that the Vetch is not tilled under
but is now left alone and allowed to go to seed to re-seed
itself on banks that can get eroded from sheet (water)
erosion. We used to grow cover crops on ground that we
left fallow for truck crops the following year. The tilled
stubble does help for crops like Tomatoes and Melons,
whom do better if they have lots of organic matter in the
soil. Helps for water holding capacity also during our heat.

As I remember it, most of our information on cover crops
during school a way back when came out of UC Davis and
Purdue University.

Jim