The kids have oats for breakfast and the garden has it for supper.  A nice oat meal before going to bed and your soil will wake up (next Spring) refreshed and ready to go.  There are many ways to dress it up and serve it as the shots illustrate.  Each reflects a different end-of-summer situation which is compatible with the sowing of oats.

In all those situations, remember to sow heavily especially if you have mulched your beds.  Enough seeds will then find their way through to emerge from the mulch as seen here.  Try to seed in September and irrigate to start the seeds.  Later on rain is all you need to get a stand.  I use a hand-cranking tool which throws the seeds with enough accuracy and cost about $25 (feed store). Oats come in a 50 pound bag for an incredible $6/bag at the feed store.  You may seed now as you read this but your stand will not generate a lot of top-growth.  Another major benefit from oat cover cropping is soil-conditioning through the extensive root system of the oats (better water infiltration, better soil life, etc...). 

Oats is my favorite cover crop with buckwheat for Summer.  And with a never-tilled gardening philosophy, it is, together with soil organisms, a most valuable way to maintain or improve the tilth of the soil over the long run.

last modified on: Monday November 10, 2008 06:41 AM -0600