What a cover crop really does all winter
Between harvest and spring, our fields are anything but empty. Here is what is happening under the surface while the land rests.
By The Krishi team
When the last of the grain is in, most fields across the country turn brown and bare for five months. Ours turn green again within a fortnight. A mix of rye, vetch, phacelia and clover goes in behind the combine, and it quietly does some of the most important work of the year.
Roots that never stop working
Living roots feed the soil. Every plant leaks sugars into the ground around it, and those sugars feed the fungi and bacteria that hold soil together. Leave a field bare and that underground economy starves. Keep something growing and it carries on all winter.
“A bare field is a closed shop. A covered one stays open all winter.”
The mix matters too. Rye roots run deep and break up compaction. Vetch and clover pull nitrogen from the air and leave it behind for the next crop. Phacelia flowers early and feeds the first bees of spring.
What we measure in March
By the time we roll the cover crop down in spring, we expect to see less run-off after heavy rain, darker topsoil and more earthworms per spadeful. We count them, every year, in the same twenty places. The numbers have climbed steadily since 2016.
It is slow, patient work, and it does not show up on a harvest report. But it is the reason the harvest report keeps getting better.
