Cover crops are essential over the summer months in sustainable agriculture systems.Learn about 3 multi-use summer cover crops for your vegetable garden with Elise Pickett of The Urban Harvest. Using sweet potatoes, cowpea beans, & New Zealand spinach as a sustainable cover crop will protect your soil from a range of issues all while providing you with maintenance-free food over the growing season. Permaculture principles suggest we should always try to have more than one use for a plant and these three certainly fit that description! Using organic, sustainable, & budget-friendly techniques you will learn all about 3 different summer cover crops so you can grow your own productive Florida backyard vegetable garden. This easy how-to home gardening lesson will get even the beginner gardener to feel ready to grow vegetables in Florida.
0:00 Summer Cover Crops for Vegetable Gardens
0:35 Benefits of Cover Crops
1:28 Sweet Potatoes as a Cover Crop
3:00 Cowpeas as a Cover Crop
4:19 New Zealand Spinach as a Cover Crop
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26 Comments
All of those plant's look half yellow and dieing
You rock
Hi, I am planning my first garden and I have a concern that raccoons and rabbits will come and feast on my veggies and all my hard work will be wasted. Do you have an issue with this or can you give any advice on how to deal with it?
Do you think it’s too late to begin planting sweet potatoes and cow peas now? I’m in central Florida.
What do you do with the leftover plant after harvest in a no-till garden? Pull it out by the roots or chop and drop? Any preparation before replanting in harvested bed? I have raised beds in SW Fl.
Great video ty
Thank you. 👍 Took your advice and planted cowpeas in my 4×8 bed. They're doing great!
I got all kind of bug holes in my sweet potatoes, I hope I actually get some sweet potatoes
Can I just put my sweet potatoes vines back on the bed as a covering to mulch down after I've pulled out all sweet potatoes.
I’ve never heard somebody suggest we not grow in summer in Florida. Maybe mid-summer isn’t the best time to start a garden, but I’ve grown a full garden from April well into October. Okra does stupendous, peppers get a little wilty, but they produce, tomatoes do fine. Obviously lettuce, spinach, and any other cool season crops are a no-go. Half the “cover crops” you mentioned are just summer crops. I was thinking you were going to suggest buckwheat, clover, or vetch.
Where do you buy your seeds? I already grow sweet l
Potatoes but have not had many leaves and its been 2 months?
I am planning on cow peas and sweet potatoes!
What a great video ! Thank you
great video, thx…I'm in zone 9 Louisiana, so I'll be able to use your suggestions.
I'm confused, so do I harvest cover crops, let them whither and die, or till them into the soil like a killer massacring his victim?
Thank you for this video. I don’t plant during the summer because of the heat and bugs. This video has given me insight on using core crops.
You're awesome! Glad I found your channel. 😀👍
This is my 3rd year growing longevity spinach. Last winter we had 24° and the spinach was wiped out. Good thing I take in and root a couple of stems every year. But the soil I recycled to grow potatoes this year has longevity spinach growing in it. I believe the seeds have taken. I'm amazed at this plant. Grows thru the hottest weather in August..
I’m so happy to find you in fl I’m going to in fl And learning what is good for fl groin in my home gardening
I have been trying spinach for so long , if you can please let me know thanks
I live central Florida east coast and just played sweet Potatoes in containers and have a spot in my yard that’s full sun. Do you think they’ll grow in beach sandy yard ? Should I loosen the soil and had anything to it ? Thank you
Just discovered your videos. Your presentations are really well done. Here in Citrus County zone 9A, I have had to relearn gardening PH, watering, fertilizing and everything else. Two years now and still struggling. 'Up North' we just planted anything everywhere and it grew.
Thank you so much! I'm in love with the purple sweet potatoes. I have them getting established under the food forest and on the edges of the garden near the fences. I think soon I will build them something to grow up on and maximize my yield
New subscriber here, great video!
I’m wanting a perennial low-lying cover crop for five acres of orange orchard to suppress the weeds between each orange tree…so something that does ok in part shade…It seems perennial peanut would be a good option, but it seems difficult/expensive to plant on that large of a scale. Do you have any other ideas?
I’ve just read that New Zealand spinach is considered invasive in Florida and California. I grow some in 2 pots, they sprouted very well, multiple plants from one seed. I keep the pots far from the open garden, but I’m still wondering what are the rules about planting invasive plants. Thank you!