What's your favorite cover crop for small-scale gardens?

[Red Horse]

What are you wanting out of your cover crop?
Do you want it to improve soil texture, attract pollinators and beneficial insects, improve Microlife in the soil, add nutrients back to the soil? Also do you want a hardy or winter kill cover crop?

I dislike using a "monocrop" cover crop, so I plant a mixture of plants to use as a cover crop.
I'll use clovers (White, Strawberry, Crimson, and Medium Red), Sweet Alyssum, Tilling Radish, and Mustard. From time to time, I will add Sunflower seeds to attract not only pollinators but also birds.

Something to keep in mind is if you're using a crop known as a "Nitrogen Fixer" you will either have the correct bacteria in your soil OR you will have to use an inoculant in order to have the benefits of the "Nitrogen Fixer".

All of those things, and edible is preferable so hardy over a solid winter kill! It's nice to have foliage left behind from the edibles to mix in.

 

[Chris2018]

All of those things, and edible is preferable so hardy over a solid winter kill! It's nice to have foliage left behind from the edibles to mix in.

What I would do is have a mix of edible and non-edible along with winter hardy and winter kill plants.

You could try a mix of clovers, radishes, mustard, sweet alyssum, marigold, winter rye, peas, and sunflowers.

 

[Red Horse]

What I would do is have a mix of edible and non-edible along with winter hardy and winter kill plants.

You could try a mix of clovers, radishes, mustard, sweet alyssum, marigold, winter rye, peas, and sunflowers.

Doing a mix never even occurred to me!!!! I'm a huge fan of Tokyo bekana mustard... it's delicious if you cut it young and use it as a salad green and it grows back super quick.