Hi lonmower, Congrats on your Fava bean. Glad to see you back and reporting on your fall cover crops. As you know, I have been of the opinion that as of MID OCTOBER, it was too late to start any cover crop from seeds.But I could be proven wrong. I mixed some fall leaves in my beds and covered them with plastic, to keep the rain our and hopefully to keep it warmer for the micro organisms to stay active. I won't remove the cover untilll April 014. Anyway, we have had one of the coldest Decembers on record around PNW. However, October and November were normal. Our weather is good for cold crop, BUT I think you have to start them early so they can get them established by early October. Otherwise they will just hang in there. I am looking forward for spring cool crop. And for that I have built a cold frame where I can germinate seeds early. This is going to be a new experiment for me here. It is quite a challenge to germinate seeds in cold soil. But once the cool crops germinate(indoor , cold frame ..), they will grow in cool spring weather.

I have grown a cover crop or I have covered the garden bed with shredded leaves, but never both at the same time. Sometimes a few leaves will get trapped in the cover crop but that is not the same as laying down 6 to 8 inches of leaves which would smother any cover crop you are growing. The leaves will have a Carbon to Nitrogen ratio of between 40 and 80 to 1, almost adequate to promote proper composting. When I have plunked down a goodly amount of leaves on the clay soils of NW Indiana and SE Ohio, shredded and unshredded, over the winter we found the soil the following spring to be more workable and that plants grew better with only a small amount of compost added, much less then the previous year when no leaves were added. If this new plot is now ready for planting I would seed Buckwheat which will be ready to cut by the time the leaves start to fall and then cover that cut Buckwheat and the soil with the leaves for the winter.

Peter- Wow. Sounds like you're getting into my head. Had some questions a while back about whether people only tended/tilled their rows, or tended/tilled their entire garden. I was thinking that it could be more cost/labor effective if you only tended rows year after year and let the aisles kind of be... with some sort of cover crop. Sounds like it can be done. I'm very interested in that. Is the white clover you mention, "dutch white clover"? When it creeps, will I be able to bring it under control when I till as normal for my fall/winter garden, and my spring/summer garden, or will I need to do additional spading/ edging of some sort then, and throughout the growing season? Can I plant it now, along with my winter garden? The book sounds interesting. I'm going to pick up a copy. Thanks for the clarification on the fact that, yes, I can grow hairy vetch and cereal rye now and still have organic matter to till in, in the early spring. Great news for me. I'm being thick headed here, but I'm still not understanding how the cereal rye affects seeds/seedlings. You say "cereal rye will suppress small seeded vegetables, but will not kill healthy transplants". Do you mean that ANY healthy transplant will not be harmed, and that only small seeds sown in place may have issues? Or do you mean by "small seeded vegetables", even transplants that are grown from small seeds can be affected? No till eh? I might be interested and your experiment suggestion is certainly something I'd be interested in trying. Do you think that even with the poor soil conditions that I have currently, it would be worth experimenting with that right now? Or, as I'm thinking maybe better to bring up my organic matter by tilling in pine bark fines, bring up my potassium levels with sulfate of potash (currently very low), add alfalfa meal to supply nitrogen needs, plant the garden, mulch with either shredded leaves or straw or hay.... Then next season try the no till part of the equation? Frankly, I'm just a little unsure about how the whole no till thing is going to work for me. Don't know a whole lot about it, but kind of thinking it might be better to do "next phase" because my soil is so poor. Please feel free to argue this to me, offer suggestions for no till on poor soil conditions viability. Do you (or anyone reading this) have a good source for cover crop seed? I was going to purchase from Johnny's selected seeds, but they are out of some of the varieties I was interested in.

texaslynn-Yes. You don't have to, but I like to cram as much as possible into a 4x8 bed. In early spring I take the weedwhacker to the tops (it can be a tangled mess) then till it all in. I have a little Honda mini tiller that's perfect for me because I'm a small person and like the fact that the oil and gas are not mixed.