How to Build Diverse Cover Crop Mixes with SmartMix

0:05 Hey everyone, this is Kate with Green Cover and I'm going to show you a couple new updates we've made to SmartMix.

0:12 I'm starting out here on the goals page. I've entered all my information and my goals down here. So, I'll continue to species. And I want to do this mix from

0:23 Scratch. So I'm going to select add species instead of the autogenerate.

0:28 So the first thing I want to point out is the season type and the life cycle drop-

0:32 Down buttons up here. In the season type, you can now select to choose either all warm season or all cool season species. And in the life cycle.

0:42 Dropdown, you can choose either annuals or perennials. You'll also notice that we've listed the plant family right underneath the product name. So, you can

0:53 Use this to help you add more plant families to your mix. You'll notice that all the legumes are in the same plant family, all the grasses are in the same.

1:03 Plant family, and all the brassicas are in the same plant family. But when you get to the broad leaves, there's a lot of different plant families represented.

1:21 Different legumes. And that doesn't really help to add a lot of diversity in your mix. You really want to add at least four different plant families. And

1:32 Some people will say getting up to that six or seven is really where you're going to hit a lot of benefits to the soil and the ecosystem as a whole.

1:41 We always recommend having at least one from the legume family, one from the grass family, one from the brassica family, and at least one from the

1:50 Broadleaf family. But if you want to get up to that six or seven, you can add multiple different broad leaves to help you achieve that more diverse mix. So, I hope this was helpful and happy mixing.