Cover Cropping

This select session of the Young Farmers Conference was live streamed on our Facebook page on Friday, December 8th, 2017 at Stone Barns Center.

Cover Cropping

Cover crops provide many soil benefits, including protecting soils from erosion, building soil organic matter, increasing water infiltration and suppressing soil-borne diseases, as well as reducing some annual and perennial weeds. In this workshop, we look at windows of opportunity for fitting cover crops into vegetable crop rotations. We look at the biological characteristics and qualities of individual northeastern cover crop species, suggested seeding rates, equipment for establishing and maintaining good stands of cover crops, and when to incorporate cover crops to benefit later plantings of cash crops. We also look at cover crop options for minimum tillage systems where vegetables like beans, broccoli, cauliflower, and sweet corn are planted directly into cover crops for greater soil health. Join Jean-Paul Courtens as he discusses his learning experiences with cover crops on various vegetable systems in the Hudson valley.

Speaker: Jean-Paul Courtens