From the Bed

Cover crops are plants you grow specifically to take care of the soil between food crops. Legumes like peas, vetch, and clover are especially valuable because they form a partnership with bacteria in their roots that captures atmospheric nitrogen and stores it in nodules. When the plant dies and decomposes, that nitrogen becomes available to whatever you grow next.

The seeds I use are speckled peas from True Leaf Market, sometimes called maple peas or field peas. They're sold as a sprouting and microgreen seed, which is what most people use them for. The same seed works beautifully as a cover crop, which is what I do with mine. One pound covers a generous raised bed at the dense rate cover crops want.

Sow them in October when you pull your summer crops. Broadcast the seeds across the bed, rake them in to about half an inch deep, water them well, and ignore them until late February. They tolerate Pacific Northwest winters down into the teens, they don't need fertilizer (they make their own nitrogen), and they'll outcompete most winter weeds.

By late February, the bed is a thick carpet of grey-green shoots, eight to twelve inches tall. This is when you can take a generous harvest without compromising the cover crop's main job. Cut the top three to four inches off the plants. Leaves, stems, tendrils, the whole tender top goes into the kitchen. The plants will keep growing for another two or three weeks before you terminate them in early March.

Don't let them flower if you're using them as a cover crop. Once they flower, the plant pulls nitrogen back out of its roots and into the seeds, which defeats the entire purpose.