Jimla: You are a smart man, getting rid of that tiller and adapting no till.. You will soon see amazing results.. I been planting winter rye and a cover crops for years with the no till method.. Works great.. I have a very similar setup as yours.. 5x70 bed and another 3x70 bed.. I sow winter rye heavily after my vegetable crips are done.. Then in spring it shoots up to a few feet in spring,preparing to go to seed.. When there's 14 hours or more of daylight (April-may) the rye starts forming seed heads(grain).. You have to cut the winter rye after it drops it's pollen, but before the seed matures.. You will see small white flakes on the immature seed heads, that's the pollen.. When you see that, it's ready to chop down.. If you chop it down before it drops pollen, the rye did not do it's job of producing offspring, and it will regrow until it does it's job.. Take your weedwacker or sycle and cut it down to the soil.. Then I cover the winter rye stems/root with compost and plant in that.. The biomass from the rye that I cut with a weedwacker, I use as mulch.. Or compost,etc.. Cover crops are one of the best things for the soil, it protects the soil, prevents erosion, and recycled nutrients from your soil.. You can't do to much better than planting a cover crop over winter... Let me know if you have any questions.. Best of luck, Joe

1. Yes, and it gets complicated trying to explain the differences between Nitrates and Nitrites. In a good, healthy soil the Soil Food Web, the soil microbes, change the various types of Nitrogen into what they plants can use and in many instances the plants are "fed" that N by some types of fungi. Some forms of Nitrogen are more readily available than others, more soluble, and are therefore more susceptible to leaching from the soil and polluting your groundwater. 2. Whether the N in an animal manure is more soluble or not depends on the form it is in. Poultry manure and horse manure have very readily available forms of N and so are "hot" while cattle, sheep, and goat manures are more stable and are considered "cold". All animal manures should be composted before being put in the garden, fresh manure should not be put on a garden plot, especially if food is being grown there. 3. Poultry and horse manures have very readily available forms of N and that availability is what makes them "hot".

I'm not a gardener but on the farm, we till in the weeds before they set any kind of seed and are still green. A weed being anything that we don't want growing there. Might be wheat, wild oats, canola, thistles, dandelions, etc. Having said that, beans are in the group of plants that fix nitrogen on their roots so I'd be tempted to harvest the beans for consumption, use the tops for composting and till the roots in. (note the "I'm not a gardener", I do love to compost so I have a bias.) Lloyd

Oh... I also think this CHART is pretty phenomenal. It lists cover crops and their specific uses. The article I posted above is pretty detailed. For example the Barbara Pleasant (Mother Earth) article linked above, she suggests "biodrilling" into clay soil with the sharp roots of daikon radishes and canola rape. Then you can turn to the chart I like here and find out that diakon attracts beneficial insects and loosens heavy soil, but it doesn't fix Nitrogen or add much organic matter. However, Canola will add organic matter, keep out weeds and tolerate the heavy soil. Used together its a pretty good pair, but still doesn't fix any Nitrogen. I think these two resources together are great as tools for selecting the best cover crops (together with zone info, etc) but they don't give me a good idea of when to plant what in zone 10 California. Hence....I'm still begging for a good calender of which common cover crops can be planted/turned in which months. I'd like to see: buckwheat, clover, barley, peas/beans, oats, radish (esp daikon), rape, rye, vetch. Here is a link that might be useful: Cover Crop Chart - Functions of various plants