Foot Crimping Cover Crops in the Garden: Weed Control and Soil Building

0:00 Hey everybody, it's Jonathan from Green Cover. I'm out here in my garden about a month and a half ago I released a video showing you how I was using a

0:08 Foot crimper to terminate my overwintering mix in my garden beds and the goal was to get a really nice thick mulch from the residue.

0:20 That I could transplant my vegetables into so I want to show you what that looks like today. So I did have some issues with just crimping the Rye.

0:31 Died really well, but the vetch really didn't and the peas didn't either. So I ended up tarping, just using black plastic tarp after I crimped.

0:42 And that really solved the issue. So my recommendation if you're doing this in your own garden beds is to go ahead and crimp it in.

0:50 Order to lay it down and then tarp it for a week and that'll make sure that all of the diversity in that mix dies as well as the cereals so what do.

1:00 My vegetables look like well I've got some peppers here and you can see the mulch looks nice and thick. There are barely any weeds coming.

1:19 Besides that, I really haven't weeded this barely at all. Cucumbers we got merry golden with the cucumbers again. You can see the grass weed on the.

1:28 Side of our living path but not very much in among the plants. Tomatoes same thing. Swiss chard beans in the background so there are a lot of

1:38 Benefits to incorporating cover crops into your garden over winter. First of all, just adding diversity. You know, we've got cereal grains and legumes.

1:47 Some of the legumes will even fix a little bit of nitrogen for your vegetables. Beyond that, the residue acts as a mulch during the growing season, which helps to suppress weeds and retain moisture and continues to decompose and feed that soil biology while your vegetables are growing. So let me know if you got any questions about transplanting vegetables into a crimped cover crop.