Hey Guys! Heres my Chicken cover crop mix. Thoughts?

[SunflowerKing]

I agree. There are many benefits to no-till. My goal is to get there eventually but the soil in my current garden was previously a hill with sparse grass and poor drainage It’s the sunniest spot in the yard and with most of the trees on the neighbors’ side of the property. So it got terraced and we’ve been adding lots of organic matter to it and tilling to improve the drainage. After a few more years of aggressive intervention like that, I figure I can switch over to no-till since the clay layers will have been broken up and there is enough organic matter incorporated that drainage will be vastly improved.

With no-till, you would still clear out dead vegetation, compost it or whatever, and add mulch so you’re continually adding organic matter. Provided your soil drains well, it’s a really fantastic option both in terms of labor saving, more friendly to the environment because most people use a gas powered tiller, and the soil structure is preserved with better aeration than traditional tilling gives. If you have poor drainage, then you’ve got to remediate that first before you can do no-till though.

Can I simply broadcast seed onto a mulch layer and expect good results?

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

Hi, I do a very similar mix in my own garden. I call it my beneficials chaos garden. I've planted a lot of the same species as you, plus a bunch more as I just tossed the ends of a lot of seed packets into it.
I don't harvest much out of it for storage, just some pumpkins and peas. All the rest I just leave to reseed themselves.
What I do at the end of the season is scythe it down (you could use line trimmer) and then put the chickens in there. They destroy absolutely everything and till the soil sufficiently that I can just resow without any seed bed work of my own. My area isn't big enough for them to stay in there all winter but once they've trashed it all up I just keep it open as part of their range and they keep it maintained till spring. We do not get any snow however so that could change things.

 

[SunflowerKing]

Hi, I do a very similar mix in my own garden. I call it my beneficials chaos garden. I've planted a lot of the same species as you, plus a bunch more as I just tossed the ends of a lot of seed packets into it.
I don't harvest much out of it for storage, just some pumpkins and peas. All the rest I just leave to reseed themselves.
What I do at the end of the season is scythe it down (you could use line trimmer) and then put the chickens in there. They destroy absolutely everything and till the soil sufficiently that I can just resow without any seed bed work of my own. My area isn't big enough for them to stay in there all winter but once they've trashed it all up I just keep it open as part of their range and they keep it maintained till spring. We do not get any snow however so that could change things.

Excellent! so maybe here is how I manage my own.

1. Seed the field with the mix.
2. Harvest the grains, cowpeas, and squash as they finish.
3. Let goats and chickens feed off of the leftovers for awhile until its all mostly knocked down.
4. start over.

I am hoping there will be a lot of bugs in this field for the chickens also as an added feed.

 

[SunflowerKing]

Hi, I do a very similar mix in my own garden. I call it my beneficials chaos garden. I've planted a lot of the same species as you, plus a bunch more as I just tossed the ends of a lot of seed packets into it.
I don't harvest much out of it for storage, just some pumpkins and peas. All the rest I just leave to reseed themselves.
What I do at the end of the season is scythe it down (you could use line trimmer) and then put the chickens in there. They destroy absolutely everything and till the soil sufficiently that I can just resow without any seed bed work of my own. My area isn't big enough for them to stay in there all winter but once they've trashed it all up I just keep it open as part of their range and they keep it maintained till spring. We do not get any snow however so that could change things.

What pumpkin variety can keep up with the "chaos"? I chose the south anna butternut because its like a weed.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

That sounds like a good pumpkin choice. Honestly my pumpkins haven't kept up very well this year in there, I've only got 2 that will make it to harvest. I don't really mind as it's my experimental space too and I've got a lot of pumpkins elsewhere.
I've got an old swingset frame in there with some plastic trellis and some string trellis attached and I've used that to provide somewhere for peas and beans to grow up to get them up and out of the crowd. That was working very well until the humidity went crazy high this year, and all my peas everywhere in my gardens have died from fungal disease.

 

[SunflowerKing]

That sounds like a good pumpkin choice. Honestly my pumpkins haven't kept up very well this year in there, I've only got 2 that will make it to harvest. I don't really mind as it's my experimental space too and I've got a lot of pumpkins elsewhere.
I've got an old swingset frame in there with some plastic trellis and some string trellis attached and I've used that to provide somewhere for peas and beans to grow up to get them up and out of the crowd. That was working very well until the humidity went crazy high this year, and all my peas everywhere in my gardens have died from fungal disease.

whats the most dominant plants in your mix? Im hoping that the Cowpeas, Sunflowers, and squash will be dominant.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Can I simply broadcast seed onto a mulch layer and expect good results?

I'd think just broadcasting into it you'd get mixed results....your best bet would be to dig (maybe with a hoe) rows into the mulch down to "bare earth" and then filling in the furrows with the dirt/mulch mix.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

Most dominant plants in my mix from direct sowing is crimson clover, nasturtium, buckwheat and gem lettuce. I didn't clean up the space much so I have a lot of narrow leaf plantain and chicory regrowing from a previous year when I put down a chicken forage mix. I put my sunflowers in as seedlings and cleared the chaos from around them so they got a good shot at it, and that has worked just fine. I'm not sure if the sunflowers would have got going as well if they were direct sown.

 

[Solanacae]

Can I simply broadcast seed onto a mulch layer and expect good results?

You can but your germination rates won’t be the same so no guarantees on keeping the percentages you set out with. At the same time, you can try it, see how it goes and then adjust next year accordingly.

 

[SunflowerKing]

I'd think just broadcasting into it you'd get mixed results....your best bet would be to dig (maybe with a hoe) rows into the mulch down to "bare earth" and then filling in the furrows with the dirt/mulch mix.

Ok. That actually makes a lot of sense. So lightly dig/rake planting rows in order to germinate seeds. That does seem like less work and zero fuel cost. Thanks!