BUCKWHEAT, Such a great Summer Crop for you garden & soil. Just an awesome green manure that build phosphorous & calcium!
I think when people hear cover crops, they think of winter time or rye grass & clover, & they do no think about growing a cover crop during the summer months. But buckwheat is a great summertime cover crop for your garden & your soil. It is a scavenger of phosphorus & calcium & mineralizes rock phosphate, making these nutrients available for later crops. Residue from the succulent buckwheat plants decomposes quickly & breaks down to become nitrogen.
Buckwheat also attracts honey bees & other pollinators like butterflies. But other beneficial insects are attracted to buckwheat as well , like Parasitic wasps, ladybugs, & hoverflies.
Anytime I get a bare spot in the garden during the summer, I throw out buckwheat seed in the bare spots. It grows super fast & if you had a garden large enough, you could harvest the buckwheat for grain use.
Buckwheat, like most cover crops, is so easy to grow. Just throw out buckwheat seeds on top of the ground & that is it. I general just throw my buckwheat seeds out all over the bare spots or after I have harvested something in my garden, like corn, but you could plant the buckwheat in rows if you wanted to.
I hope you try buckwheat as a summertime cover crop in your garden. Growing cover crops is so beneficial & you & your soil will love the results from growing buckwheat & from growing cover crops in general.
Thanks for watching this video on how to grow buckwheat as a cover crop & if you do something different or grow a cover crop different than buckwheat for hot climates, please let me know..I would love to know what type of cover crop you are growing in your garden!