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.

Ooh I see. Thank you so much for your help! I planted garlic yesterday and I think that is all I will plant in the winter, edible wise haha; The cold and rain doesn't really motivate me to go outside as much as the summer weather does, to garden haha. I hear that that rain here washes away our soil, I don't know if that compacts it too. I have some native soil in the bottom of some of the beds, which maybe why it becomes hard during the winter. I do have one new raised bed though that is mostly full of veggie gardening soil from a local nursery and is very loose, so hopefully that will be easy to spade in the spring. I am still waiting for my cucumbers, beans, and peppers to die off then I can try putting cover crops in those beds because the nursery manager said that we can plant cover crops in our area until mid-November and that I should wait for my plants in the beds to die off first. I live across the river from Portland, in Vancouver. Although, I want to try bringing in at least one jalapeno pepper to prune and transplant in the spring. Do have experience or know how to do that successfully in our area? I have watched videos about it, but none of them were in the NW. Maybe the location doesn't matter though. I almost forgot to say that I bought some crimson clover and dutch white clover to try to cover crop with. The nursery said to watch for birds, so they don't eat the seeds because you don't cover them with dirt. If so, it's very little dirt he said. You learn something new every year while gardening! :-)

As to a winter non-cover cover crop, how about arugala. Mine is sprouting now and it grew through all the winter And comes up wild this time of year You can eat it too You and your worms.... Masanobu Fukuoka ( invented seed balls and wrote "The One Straw Revolution) used Daikon intermixed in his winter wheat and barley as a green manure. The daikon was to break the soil up. That is why I mentioned it. I was talking to a Turkish Gardener and she uses Fava beans as a winter grower to put nitrogen into the soil. She turns them into the soil when the flowers are flowering but before beans form.The flowers are great for attracting bees in early spring. Wow vermiculture. Are you doing this inside or outside. I googled the beasties and came up with this article about the Asiatic "Alabama " Jumper becoming invassive. It is escaping and getting into the wild where it is eating the Duff layer of the soil. Duff is about all we have under the trees in places out here in the hill country.These critters seem to be escape artist. I hope they don't like dry hot texas. I apologize for being so off topic. I don't really know anything about this so please don't think I am condemning. It is more verbal curiosity and asking if you knew anything about this? I don't know nothing. I am just googling and wondering out loud.. Here is a link that might be useful: Controling spread of Alabama Jumper

I have three very different, and widely separated, gardens. The one in the picture is right behind my house. There are three plots there under cereal rye. I have only ever had one instance of deer here. I strung up some electric fence tape and they stopped bothering my okra. I didn't even have to attach an electric source. I guess they had prior knowledge of that electric tape. My 1/2 acre garden is in Guthrie proper. I have never had an issue there. Our new 3 acre garden is becoming a real struggle though. I plan to add another wire to that electric fence soon. It will be a horizontal distance of three feet from the current top wire. Wish us luck.