Best Cover Crops for the Home Garden

Unlike the plants we sow for harvesting, cover crops are grown for the soil, not our tables.

Widely used by organic and conventional farmers, they’re planted in rotation with cash crops to sweeten the soil, or for winter protection.

But they’re equally beneficial and easy to use in the home garden as well.

Along with improving your soil’s nutritional profile, they prevent soil loss due to erosion, improve the structure and tilth of soil, prevent compaction, assist with water infiltration and retention, break up pest cycles, and suppress weeds.

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They also reduce or eliminate the need for synthetic fertilizers, which has a significant, beneficial effect on our backyard flora and fauna, and the environment at large.

You can read more about their uses and many benefits in our guide to the art of cover cropping.

Smartly efficient, effective, and all natural, here are 15 of the best cover crops for the home garden.

Plant selections for cover crops are divided into three categories of brassicas, grains and grasses, and legumes.

Let’s look at what each category offers.

Brassica is the collective name for plants of the Brassicaceae or Cruciferae family, many of which are commonly grown vegetables.

Many of these species make great food crops, and popular brassicas you might already be growing include arugula, kale, mustard, and radishes.

Several contain chemical compounds that give them peppery, pungent flavors. And the same compounds that give them their signature hot flavors are released into the soil when plant cells are ruptured by mowing, tilling, or winter-kill.

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