Your Soil Feeds Itself All Winter When You Sow These

Clover pulls nitrogen out of the air and banks it in root nodules, which is fertilizer you did not buy. Crimson clover establishes fast in fall, holds soil all winter, and pays a second dividend in April: crimson blooms the bees mob before you turn it under. Five pounds covers every empty bed in a big garden.

Seed six weeks before hard frost - late-sown clover winterkills in the north.

The tomato bed never empties until frost, and by then clover's window is shut. Winter rye germinates in cold soil right into November, throws roots four feet down busting compaction, and greens up before anything else in spring. It is the cover crop for procrastinators, which is all of us.

Cut it BEFORE it sets seed in spring or you have planted a grain crop.

Hand-flinging small seed gives you a bed that is turf in one corner and bare in another - clover seed is dust and impossible to scatter evenly by feel. A crank spreader meters it in even passes, and does the lawn overseeding and the spring amendments with the same three minutes of effort.

Mixing tiny seed with dry sand first is the free version of even coverage.

Broadcast seed that just lies there gets eaten, washed and dried out - cover crop wants scratching into the top half-inch where it stays damp and hidden. A steel bow rake roughs the bed before sowing and drags soil over the seed after, and the flat back levels spring beds like a screed.

This is the rake the garden was missing if all you own is a leaf rake.

Come April the cover crop has done its work and needs cutting before it seeds - in a raised bed, that is hedge-shear work: grab, shear at the crown, drop the tops as mulch right where they fall. The roots rot in place and feed the bed. No tilling, no hauling, no bare soil.

Leave the roots in the ground - pulling them out undoes half the point.