By Sarah Strauss
One of the keys to good cover crop germination, and thus the potential benefits to soil health, is timing planting with summer rains. As cover crops are planted to improve soil health and are not harvested for profit, you want them to require as little effort on your part as possible. Relying on rain for irrigation can help ensure good growth.
Improvements to soil health from planting cover crops can take many years. However, short-term benefits can include changes to the soil microbial community, which can impact nutrient availability. Cover crops can also have rapid impacts on weed management, as they can outcompete and shade out weeds.
Planting annual cover crops at the beginning of the rainy season (June to early July) and toward the end of the rainy season (October to early November) can help ensure good cover crop growth. While perennial cover crops can also be used in citrus groves, they can take time to establish. So for potentially faster impacts, plant annual cover crops.
Different cover crop species can provide different benefits to the soil. For example, legume cover crops such as sunn hemp can provide nitrogen to the soil. Non-legume cover crops such as millet or sorghum-sudangrass can provide carbon, which can help increase microbial activity and nutrient cycling.
Unlike when planting cover crops for vegetable or agronomic crops, letting cover crops in citrus groves produce seeds can be a good thing. Waiting until after the cover crops flower and produce seeds can help build a seed bank in your soil so you don’t have to plant as many seeds in the next season.
The annual cover crops planted in the beginning of the rainy season will likely start to naturally die by the end of October. At this point, mow the cover crops and do a shallow discing to break up the plant material. Then, plant your next round of cover crops. The old cover crops will provide additional moisture for the new seeds.
Read more Citrus Industry cover crop articles here.
Sarah Strauss is an associate professor at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Southwest Florida Research and Education Center in Immokalee.
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