The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Sunn hemp

Sunn hemp flower

I've noticed by reading back over old posts that I tend to be less than enthralled with just about every cover crop the first time I grow it, so take this with a grain of salt, but...I'm less than enthralled with sunn hemp.  Here are the negatives that jumped out at me this summer:

Forest garden

All of that said, sunn hemp is pretty, especially now that it's starting to bloom.  And the plants are legumes, so they fix nitrogen, which my other cover crops don't do.  Still, they failed to meet my two primary goals for cover crops (maximum biomass production and weed suppression), so I don't think we'll try sunn hemp again.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Is seven years' weed!" I hope you can catch the weeds before they spread their seeds all over your field. Knowing nothing about cover crops, I wonder if clover is a possibility? I think it fixes nitrogen and attracts bees, but don't know any more. Good luck finding an alternative!
Comment by Rhonda from Baddeck Tue Sep 17 14:58:56 2013
Could you plant both the sunn hemp and the sweet potatoes in the same plot? If they don't compete for the same vertical space, you might be able to get the best of both crops.
Comment by Jake Tue Sep 17 21:51:00 2013
The spider just wants a hug...
Comment by Brian Wed Sep 18 13:07:02 2013





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