Which Cover Crop Seed Do I Need?

Cover crop seeds are incredibly useful for UK farmers, as they grow into flowers and grass that protect the soil, prevent weeds and pests from destroying crops and balance nitrogen levels in the field. However, there are several different types of crop cover, all of which have their own benefits and specialities. Using our generation of agricultural knowledge at Smart Seeds, we’ve compiled a rundown article comparing the different types of cover crop seeds and their individual characteristics. It should be noted that we have a range of cover crops for game birds that is located in our “Game Cover” crops section.

Grass

Grass crops, such as ryegrass, are good for collecting residual nutrients like nitrogen that have been left over from a previous crop. Grass crops do a good job of breaking down the soil and adding organic matter to it, and the residue they leave is plentiful and long-lasting, which is great for preventing weeds from growing and taking nutrients from the crops.

Smart Seeds offers a hearty package of rapid-growing Italian ryegrass cover crop seeds that lasts up to two years, so you can just set it and forget it for multiple harvest seasons. They act as a green manure cover crop, too, which attracts insects and vertebrates that will control pests and benefit your crop harvest.

Legumes

Legumes such as clovers are popular to produce biomass and fix nitrogen from the air around the crops, as well as preventing erosion and adding organic matter to the soil. However, they are not as effective at extracting excess nitrogen and rebalancing the atmosphere composition as other cover crops, and instead produce the best results in the springtime. Legumes are perhaps best used in conjunction with grass cover crops, as one complements the other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Legumes generally are more nitrogen than carbon when compared to grass crops, which means any residue it produces will break down and lose its weed-preventing properties much quicker. This also means it creates less organic soil matter than grasses, but its biomass-emitting capabilities far outweigh the other crop. Legumes and grasses paired together create one of the most effective natural cover crop management systems you can possibly achieve, producing balanced levels of nitrogen and biomass, and controlling weeds, pests and erosion.

One of the aesthetic benefits of clovers is that they come in a range of vibrant colours, and our store offers a bounty of shades that will brighten up your day every time you look at them fully grown. We’ve got a gorgeous crimson red, a hard-wearing white clover and a yellow clover that has the added benefit of attracting bees and other pollinators more readily.

Brassicas

Brassica cover crops like radishes are not as readily-bought as grasses or legumes, but do offer a few unique advantages over the other crops available. The organic pest management ability of brassicas is one that catches the eye. 

In addition, brassicas are beloved for their rapid autumn growth and healthy biomass production, both of which look after the threat of erosion to a high standard. Brassicas are known as nutrient scavengers, too, sucking up any nutrients from the crop before leaving in the soil.

Smart Seeds has a selection of radish brassicas that function as described above, from the organic fodder to spread over large areas, to the deep-rooted Daikon seeds, which have a large canopy and long tap root.

Non-Legume Broadleaved species

Broadleaved plants are, by name, a broad leafed category of cover crop seeds. However, the non-legume variant is a category that hasn’t been covered, such as buckwheat.

Buckwheat is a plant that excels in scavenging for phosphate in the soil, breaking it down and providing it to subsequent crops after storage, sort of like a Robin Hood-type plant. If your soil is suffering from phosphate lockup, buckwheat will take out the overloaded phosphate.

Our line-up of buckwheat crop seeds is some of the quickest-growing in the entire Smart Seeds store, taking just 8-10 weeks to begin improving the soil. It’s extra useful for those narrow gaps in the rotation of crops you may find yourself in, producing dense green cover quickly to protect the soil from pests and erosion. As well as this, both our organic and inorganic sets of buckwheat are friendly and attractive to wildlife, not just pollinators and insects, but deer, pheasant, partridge and ducks, too. This is not only a pleasant surprise on the farm, but offers additional cover and feed for the soil.