Cover crops in raised beds - seed in the spring???

[Mr_Yan]

Crazy idea or worth experimenting with?

How well will spring planted cover crops do?
How do others with no-till methods handle cover crops?
If I seed something like diakon radish in beds where I will grow peppers for the summer can the radish be thinned out or should I kill off all at once and transplant the peppers?

I have raised beds each of which was filled like Meadowlark's hugelkulture containers. These raised beds were built last year and the soil level settled significantly. Today, to top them off, I shoveled out several 5 gallon buckets of soil and back filled with mixed compostable stuff (a mix of chopped early spring weeds, cut up ornamental grass from last season, and leafs). The buckets were then poured back over it and the soil spread out. My soil is very sandy and if left uncovered and drys out the organic matter disappears. So thinking why not I tossed a handfull of Scav-N-Ger diakon radish seeds over the garden bed.

edit to add - oh yeah, it is still a month before my typical last frost date. We've been in the upper 70s F for the last few days and forecast calls for snow in 4 days.

What may be of interest to @Meadowlark and @skinyea is when digging in these wood-core/hugelkulture filled containers I found no recognizable plant matter I filled them with last season and was able to easily dig full scoops with a square front shovel similar to this one.

 

[Meadowlark]

Crazy, are you kidding me?

Not only not crazy but far "saner" than throwing synthetics at them. Daikron radish are great. I would also guess that clovers and/or vetch would also work very well as well as a cereal rye in the weather conditions you currently have.

On my Hügelkultur containers, I have evolved to a "harvest and replace" approach, i.e. I harvest the intended crops from the containers about three times and then I replace the topsoil layer which in my case is about 7 inches with fresh rejuvenated garden soil that has been recently cover cropped. This accomplishes crop rotation as well as complete soil rejuvenation. Very easy to do takes only about three shovelfuls of fresh vital dirt and the container is ready for another year or two. The replacement soil tests out at "No NPK required". I've yet to test a "used" soil layer from a container but intend to do that soon. I'm thinking I have achieved sustainment.

One thing I have learned is to never leave your garden soil uncovered; always have something growing in it, i.e., a crop or a cover.

As far as no tilling, well I do very little tilling but do disc the main garden area occasionally to incorporate the green cover crops into the soils as well as incorporate well composted manure. Discing is almost always preceded by close mowing the green manure. That way one only needs to disc lightly the top layer of soil to incorporate the cover. Not sure how one would get around that and have a fully self-sustainable system as I have now.

 

[skinyea]

In my containers this winter I did Favas and Crimson clover. same as Garden.

I kept the same dirt. should be good to go for this year.

did the Petri method with seeds this year and had 95% success rate. going to have alot of Tomato's/Peppers/okra this year.