Preliminary results are trickling in from this year's cover-crop experiments. I'll start with the least successful --- barley. Barley works fine as a fall-planted cover crop, assuming you have a way to kill the overwintering plants in the spring. And I'd read that you can also plant barley in spring as an early ground cover that heads up in time to let you plant summer vegetables afterwards. Unfortunately, I didn't give the species a very good test.

The barley pictured above went into the bare soil of the forest garden aisles, which had been dug down to near the level of the groundwater in order to mound up the surrounding beds. But soon after planting in early April, the aisles flooded and (I suspect) killed emerging seedlings. After that, our weather took an extreme turn in the other direction and turned hot and dry, making for bad spring-crop conditions.

I did plant another test bed in the main garden, but, unfortunately, that bed fell prey to Mark's weedeater. In his defense, baby barley looks just like grass. And I hadn't done a good job of weeding that area yet this spring, so my long-suffering husband wasn't entirely sure where the aisles ended and the beds began. To cut a long story short --- most of the barley planted there didn't manage to regrow and the bed instead went to weeds.

I planted alfalfa at about the same time and in about the same place, but with more trepidation. However, to my surprise, the legume turned out to be much more hardy than the grain. The forest-garden aisle of alfalfa had to deal with the same flooding-then-parching conditions, and the control bed in the front garden also got accidentally mowed. But alfalfa in both spots managed to resprout and make at least a moderate stand. In fact, in areas where I planted alfalfa and protected them from the weedeater, the cover crop nearly looks ready to be cut as a come-again mulch producer. Not bad work for two months of growth!

Legumes are one of the themes of this summer as well. Sure, I largely depend on animal manures to add nitrogen to our garden, but it never hurts to have a vegetative source of the high-demand nutrient. So I'm trying out soybeans in several locations ranging from rye stubble in prime soil beds to the pure clay that has been recently solarized. I'll keep you posted about the results.

In the photo to the right, you can actually see three different cover-crop species if you look closely. In addition to soybeans and scarlet runner beans (to train onto the trellis not visible above the picture), I also interplanted both millet and sorghum-sudangrass in this bed. I'm not sure whether the millet is actually coming up, but the sorghum-sudangrass is growing, albeit slowly. More on these warm-season grasses as the season progresses.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite summer cover crop, the old standby buckwheat. This non-grassy grain managed to sprout despite our recent drought and is pictured above filling in empty bed areas between young apple trees. Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, after trying six new species in 2015, I plant all buckwheat again next year. But stay posted for updates as they come down the pike!