In this guest post, Fern Marshall Bradley, coeditor of Reader's Digest's All-New Illustrated Guide to Gardening, talks about a great technique for reviving sad garden soil.
In the past two years, thousands of Americans have started growing
fruits and vegetables in backyard and community gardens in a quest to
provide fresh, nutritious food for themselves and their families. If
you're one of those new gardeners, I hope you've had great success and
discovered a fabulous variety of delicious tastes and healthful food.
But if your garden hasn't been as productive as you'd like, perhaps you
need to revitalize your soil by growing a cover crop.
What is a cover crop? It's a
planting specifically intended to densely cover the soil surface and to
add organic matter to the soil. The thick cover prevents erosion and
keeps down weeds. And after the crop has grown for several weeks (or
even a whole growing season), you'll cut it down and dig it into the
topsoil. All that fresh green material......
