What are diverse cover crops (and how do I use them)?

The intention of this ‘What are diverse cover crops?’ collection of webpages is to describe diverse cover crops and their benefits, as well as to provide you with things to think about when adopting or tweaking the use of them.

Diverse cover crops are diverse annual plant mixes which are used in pastoral systems, sown between cash crops in arable systems, or grown between tree/vine rows as a longer term cover crop in horticulture / viticulture systems.

Diverse cover crops achieve multiple benefits from a single crop. They can help to solve common challenges such as compaction, high fertiliser inputs, weed pressure, pests and diseases, leaching, and erosion. Overall, cover crops maintain living soil cover; feeding soil microbes, cycling nutrients, building soil structure, and creating habitat for beneficial insects.

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Specific benefits of using diverse cover crops

Compared to low diversity cover crops, the use of more diverse cover crops provide:

• soil armour protect soils from wind, rain, and sun damage

• living roots hold soils together and feed soil microbes resulting in uptake and retention of nutrients that could otherwise be lost via leaching, erosion, or lock up

• forage for livestock integration

• harnessing the strengths of different plant species, e.g; oats support mycorrhizal fungi populations, buckwheat roots release acids that solubilise ‘locked up’ soil phosphorous to increase plant available phosphorous, legumes increase plant available nitrogen through nitrogen fixation

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