Why
Use Cover Crops?
Use cover crops because
they feed the soil and the soil feeds us.
Agriculture is a creative imbalance
in nature, a region of excess organization begun and maintained
by adding energy to a place. We can add energy in several ways.
We can pump oil out of the ground and pour it on the soil in its
guises as herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers until
the soil becomes dead dirt, a method that requires ever-increasing
additions of energy for ever-decreasing returns. Killing the soil
instead of feeding it. Or we can try for a sustainable addition
of energy, soil amendments, organic fertilizers and cover crops
to provide nourishment to the soils which nourish the plants which
nourish us.
Cover crops take up and store
needed elements for the crops that follow them, keep weeds down,
host beneficial insects, improve the structure and arability of
the soil, break up clay and hardpan. Most of all, as they die back
and are turned into the soil, they provide food and energy for the
real farmers, the organisms that live and thrive in a healthy soil
feeding and caring for the plants. Use cover crops to create a system
which can keep itself going, absorbing energy from the sun, taking
up energy released by dying microorganisms, releasing it in the
fullness of time to new generations of crops and microorganisms.
Build a sustainable agriculture guided by intelligence and care
and started from seed.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to
grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
(from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”) |
Organic
Growers Supply