Cover crops slow erosion, improve soil, smother weeds, enhance nutrient and moisture availability, help control many pests and bring a host of other benefits to your farm. At the same time, they can reduce costs, increase profits and even create new sources of income. You¿ll reap dividends on your cover crop investments for years, since their benefits accumulate over the long term. This book will help you find which ones are right for you. Captures farmer and other research results from the past ten years. The authors verified the info. from the 2nd ed., added new results and updated farmer profiles and research data, and added 2 chap. Includes maps and charts, detailed narratives about individual cover crop species, and chap. about aspects of cover cropping.

The Low-Tech, No-Grow-Lights Approach to Abundant Harvest Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening offers good news: with nothing more than a cupboard and a windowsill, you can grow all the fresh salad greens you need for the winter months (or throughout the entire year) with no lights, no pumps, and no greenhouse. Longtime gardener Peter Burke was tired of the growing season ending with the first frost, but due to his busy work schedule and family life, didn’t have the time or interest in high-input grow lights or greenhouses. Most techniques for growing what are commonly referred to as “microgreens” left him feeling overwhelmed and uninterested. There had to be a simpler way to grow greens for his family indoors. After some research and diligent experimenting, Burke discovered he was right—there was a way! And it was even easier than he ever could have hoped, and the greens more nutrient packed. He didn’t even need a south-facing window, and he already had most of the needed supplies just sitting in his pantry. The result: healthy, homegrown salad greens at a fraction of the cost of buying them at the market. The secret: start them in the dark. Growing “Soil Sprouts”—Burke’s own descriptive term for sprouted seeds grown in soil as opposed to in jars—employs a method that encourages a long stem without expansive roots, and provides delicious salad greens in just seven to ten days, way earlier than any other method, with much less work. Indeed, of all the ways to grow immature greens, this is the easiest and most productive technique. Forget about grow lights and heat lamps! This book is a revolutionary and inviting guide for both first-time and experienced gardeners in rural or urban environments. All you need is a windowsill or two. In fact, Burke has grown up to six pounds of greens per day using just the windowsills in his kitchen! Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening offers detailed step-by-step instructions to mastering this method (hint: it’s impossible not to succeed, it’s so easy!), tools and accessories to have on hand, seeds and greens varieties, soil and compost, trays and planters, shelving, harvest and storage, recipes, scaling up to serve local markets, and much more.

Enjoy a thriving, fragrant herb garden and use your harvest to bring beauty, flavor, and health to your everyday life. Tammi Hartung provides in-depth profiles of 101 popular herbs, including information on seed selection, planting, maintenance, harvesting, and drying. Hartung also shows you how to use your herbs in a variety of foods, home remedies, body care products, and crafts. Whether you’re a seasoned herbalist or planting your first garden, Homegrown Herbs will inspire you to get the most out of your herbs.

Companion planting has a long history of use by gardeners, but the explanation of why it works has been filled with folklore and conjecture. Plant Partners delivers a research-based rationale for this ever-popular growing technique, offering dozens of ways you can use scientifically tested plant partnerships to benefit your whole garden. Through an enhanced understanding of how plants interact with and influence each other, this guide suggests specific plant combinations that improve soil health and weed control, decrease pest damage, and increase biodiversity, resulting in real and measurable impacts in the garden.

Red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) is one of the many species belonging to the genus Trifolium, which are widely cultivated around the world. It is a perennial plant and offers permanence that determines its uses as well as environmental and agronomic requirements. Red clover is grown mainly for seeds and biomass. The most important environmental factors that affect red clover yield are soil conditions, temperature and precipitation during the growing season. Key agronomic factors include sowing date, cultivation regime, fertilization, plant protection and harvesting date. The species can be grown in pure and mixed stands (with alfalfa, cereals and various grass species). Newly bred triploid varieties of red clover are characterized by desirable growth habit traits and yield components as well as high yield. Red clover has many applications. It is currently experiencing a revival of interest as a traditional folk remedy. The species acts as a rich source of compounds with expectorant, analgesic and antiseptic properties. The callus from Trifolium pratense has been found to exert inhibitory effects on fungal and bacterial strains. Red clover contains isoflavones, anthocyanin pigments and phytoestrogens, which may help reduce the risk of heart disease, breast cancer and endometrial cancer; it also alleviates menopausal symptoms. Red clover lowers blood cholesterol levels and helps prevent prostate cancer. Red clover ointments are used to treat skin diseases, including psoriasis. Red clover provides biomass for livestock nutrition and/or biogas production. It has high nutritional value and constitutes valuable raw material for silage making. Red clover can be grown with grasses, barley, oats and wheat, thus providing various types of fodder with high biological value and natural high-protein feed. When grown as a cover crop, red clover fixes and supplies nitrogen to cereal crops. It also helps break disease and insect cycles, especially in plantations protected against weeds. The crude protein content of red clover decreases with advancing maturity. Due to its permanence, this perennial plant contributes to environmental protection and anesthetization; it helps prevent soil erosion, and is used in phytoremediation and barren land management schemes.

Annotation In All Flesh Is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, Gene Logsdon explains that well-managed pastures are nutritious and palatable - virtual salads for livestock. Leafy pastures also hold the soil, increase biodiversity, and create lovely landscapes. Grass farming may be the solution for a stressed agricultural system based on an industrial model and propped up by federal subsidies. The pasture farming that Gene Logsdon practices can also produce grains, fruits, herbs, mushrooms, and salad greens for human consumption. The book explains historically effective practices and new techniques that have blossomed in recent years for the care and sustenance of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry on pasture. Logsdon's warm profiles of successful grass farmers offer inspiration and ideas. His narrative is enriched by his experience as a "contrary farmer" on his own artisan-scale farm. The culmination of a lifetime's experience, this book is vital for owners of small acreages, home food producers, horse enthusiasts, and sustainable commercial farmers.