Healthy soil = healthy food
Cover Crop Solutions for Gardens and Homesteads
-
Find the right cover crop mix for your goals
Our pre-made mixes are designed with many different uses in mind. Use our decision guide to find the right mix for you.
-
Plant your seed and naturally improve your soil
Nothing builds healthy soil like a diverse mix of growing plants. Cover crop mixes improve soil structure, increase soil organic matter, and boost microbial life in your soil.
-
Grow healthy plants that produce healthy food
Whether you’re growing forages for your livestock or fresh produce in your garden, improved soil health will greatly impact the health of your plants and the quality of the food that you grow.
-
from $0.74 per lb
-
from $0.74 per lb
-
from $1.40 per lb
-
Build Your Soil
Keep your garden beds or pastures covered. Add diversity with our soil building mixes all year round.
-
from $1.62 per lb
-
from $1.94 per lb
-
from $25.00 per lb
-
from $5.70 per lb
-
from $3.28 per lb
-
from $3.60 per lb
-
Attract Pollinators
Our pollinator mixes are chock full of flowering cover crops that will attract pollinators and beneficial insects from miles around
-
from $0.53 per lb
-
from $0.77 per lb
-
from $1.46 per lb
-
from $1.99 per lb
-
from $1.51 per lb
-
Graze Your Livestock
Whether you're grazing sheep and goats, a small herd of cattle or even chickens, your livestock will love the forage from the palatable and diverse mixes
-
from $1.18 per lb
-
from $1.36 per lb
-
from $2.51 per lb
-
Maximize Plant Diversity
Looking to really boost your soil's productivity? These mixes include even more diversity and build relationships with even more soil-building microbes.
Or grow produce in a maximum diversity setting with our Milpa Garden Mix.
Overwinter your garden beds with cover crops
- In the fall, after you harvest your garden, prep your beds for planting. We recommend a no-till approach because it minimizes soil disturbance.
- Broadcast our Overwintering Mix into your garden beds and lightly incorporate. Cover with a layer of straw and keep the area moist.
- In the last months of fall, this cold-hardy mix gets established before winter.
- Come springtime warmup, the cover crop begins to grow tall.
- When it’s time to plant your garden, terminate the cover crop. One option is to crimp using a foot crimper and cover the bed with a black tarp for two weeks. Learn more about methods for cover crop termination in a garden setting in this video or in this book by Jesse Frost: The Living Soil Handbook
- Transplant seedlings directly into the dense weed-suppressing mulch left by the terminated cover crop.
Build healthy pasture for your livestock
- In early spring, prep the ground for planting. If you're taking a no-till approach, mow or graze short, remove thatch, and scrape the ground in order to increase seed-to-soil contact.
- Broadcast our Cool Season Soil Builder mix, lightly incorporate by scraping the soil, and cover with straw to keep the soil moist. If you can, time your planting immediately before rain.
- Graze your chickens, sheep goats or other livestock in late spring or early summer.
- If you want to add more warm season species, you can overseed our Warm Season Grazing Mix in the summer.
How one customer improved his pasture
Alex Erhard, a technology manager in Colorado, purchased a 3-acre property that had extremely compacted clay soil, which he describes as like concrete. He said there was no sign of worms, and the land was overtaken by kochia, thistles, and bindweed.
After planting Cool Season Soil Builder in the spring, Alex says that existing smooth brome came up first, followed by the cover crop seedlings. The cover crop choked out the kochia and thistles, although it did not compete with the bindweed in the first year.
Alex now says his soil is very soft and moist, and there are lots of insects—attracting pollinators was a very good surprise.
Grow a Milpa garden
- Plant a garden mix of over 40 different seeds including multiple varieties of Squash, Cucumbers, Watermelons, Beets, Turnips, Sunflowers, Okra, and many more, all while improving your soil.
- In late spring or early summer, prep your ground for planting.
- Broadcast Milpa Mix and lightly incorporate. Cover with a layer of straw and keep the area moist.
- Watch and observe as this super-diverse garden mix grows.
- Throughout the season, harvest your Milpa as different plants mature and fruit ripens.
- Read more about Milpa and how to get free seed with our First Acre program.