Cover Cropping Deep Dive

Cover crops are one of our favorite parts of farming at Adamah. They don't result in juicy flavor bursting onto your tongue on a hot summer day like a cherry tomato, or in creamy, soups warming your winter belly like butternut squash. Instead the excitement of cover crops is below ground. 

Farming transfers nutrients from the soil into our bodies. There are many ways to put those nutrients that are so essential for plant growth back into the soil before growing the next crop. You can fertilize with synthetic fertilizers, manufactured using so much heat and pressure that they account for the highest fossil fuel use among agricultural practices. You can mine for nutrients in bat guano or minerals. You can turn food waste and manure into fertilizer (see our blog post on composting below). Or, you can grow your own fertilizer by cover cropping. 

Also called "green manure," cover crops are plants that increase the organic matter and nutrient profile of a farming system. We combine small grains like oats or rye that produce a lot of biomass, compete with weeds, and hold soil in place with legumes like vetch, peas, or clover that partner with rhizobia bacteria to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere (where it is abundant) into the soil (where plants are constantly chasing it as an essential part of their growth needs).

We sneak cover crops into our beds at every moment that they aren't actively growing vegetables. This keeps the power of photosynthesis active and our beloved soil microbes well fed.