Most of you probably are
wondering why I'm growing Buckwheat. I realize that growing flowers or
vegetables in a dorm room is probably the sexier choice, but I wanted to
go a bit out of the box. Buckwheat falls under the category of plants
known as cover crops. Cover crops, or green manure, are plants that are
purposely grown for enhancing your soil by providing organic matter when
tilled into the ground. They may not look attractive, or directly
produce any fruit, but they are almost like spreading manure over your
whole field, without needing to use a shovel, or a gas mask for that
matter. Cover crops
also help to lessen erosion, and decrease the affect of rain on the
garden by slowing the runoff of water, and they suppress the growth of
weeds. Besides buckwheat, other cover crops are oats, sweet clover, white clover, annual
ryegrass, winter rye, winter wheat, hairy vetch among others. All of
these are grown in different times of the year and serve different
purposes. Buckwheat is a summer cover crop.
Cover crops have become a really big debate in the Lake Champlain area, as many farmers still neglect to use them even though it would greatly reduce the amount of runoff from the empty fields into the lake. The lake is suffering greatly from phosphorus pollution, and routinely experiences blue-green algae blooms during the summer...
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Great info Colin!
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