I haven't regaled you with tales of cover crops in a while, but that doesn't mean we haven't been experimenting.  First of all, cutting rye with the weedeater right at ground level was highly effective, although my scything a little higher up resulted in some resprouting.  The plants we cut early, just as they were barely starting to bloom, were also more likely to resprout.  A final warning --- the rye did hold onto nitrogen much harder than any other cover crop I've grown, so a few broccoli sets I transplanted directly into manure poured on top of the stubble took a week or two to really start getting the nutrients they needed.  But, overall, we were very pleased with our rye experiment and will definitely repeat it, especially in problematic soil areas where the rye built masses of organic matter.

Most of the back garden is fallow this year as I prepare it for next year's tomato crop, so I broadcast buckwheat seeds into the rye before Mark cut it.  Mark and I both spread our pee on certain areas for a week or so (until the buckwheat started sprouting) to add nitrogen to the ground, but the buckwheat is struggling.  It definitely came up well through the rye stubble, but I've always had a problem getting much growth out of buckwheat in areas with a very high groundwater, and this year is no exception.  We'll get a bit of growth out of the back garden buckwheat, but I'm thinking of trying some sunflowers next.

In contrast, the buckwheat I've planted into good garden areas is over twice as large and is thriving.  I've already made inroads into my buckwheat challenge, having planted about 4.5 gallons of seed so far this spring and summer.

But our big experiment came into my inbox as a whim.  Harvey Ussery is testing out sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea), and wanted to send out samples to his readers for us to try in different parts of the country.  This legume gets up to eight feet tall and produces huge amounts of biomass before frosts kill the plants in the fall.  You can cut the plants at 60 days as a high-nitrogen addition to the garden or compost pile, or wait a bit longer, at which point the carbon levels rise and sunn hemp becomes a quality mulch.  In addition, cutting the plants once at four feet tall results in resprouting and even more biomass production.  I slipped the seeds into gaps in the forest garden where broccoli was coming out, and I envision the high-carbon stems at the end of the year will make good mulch around fruit trees.  I'll keep you posted about the results of my experiment, and you'll be able to read how sunn hemp did for us and other experimenters this fall or winter in an article by Harvey Ussery in Mother Earth News.