Home Cover Crops Menu Sustainable Farming Connection Where farmers find and share information. Cover Crops Menu Use covers to build soil, reduce fertilizer and smother weeds. Managing Cover Crops Profitably -- New 212-page book from the USDA's SARE program helps farmers zero in on the right cover crops and manage them for maximum benefits. Online Cover Crop Video -- Watch innovator Steve Groff kill his cover crop with a stalk chopper and no-till transplant tomotoes (.avi or .mov files). Cover Crop and Forage Seed Sources -- Find the varieties you need to fit your farming system. Features: No-Till Transplanting Into Cover Crops Pa. vegetable grower Steve Groff shares tips about his 'New Generation' cropping systems. Hot Links: PlantLink finds more info about your favorite covers. If you're just starting to look for the right cover crop, this search engine is probably not for you. But once you've narrowed your choice (use the links below), this is a great place to find more information. For example, type in hairy vetch and you'll quickly find links to pages about everything from no-till transplanting tomatoes into vetch in California to the effects of vetch kill date on N production in Maryland -- dozens of useful pages from Extension, USDA, nonprofits, and farmers. Of course you'll also turn up a good deal of irrelevant info to. Study the domain names, titles and keywords returned carefully to focus in on what you're looking for, and use your "right-click, open in a new window" option to keep several sites loading while you scan the list. Farmscaping to Enhance Biological Control -- This excellent online resource from ATTRA tells how to turn your farm into a home for beneficial insects to help check pest problems. Please register at the site's publication page before viewing. Cover and Green Manure Crop Benefits to Soil Quality -- Good summary from the USDA-NRCS Soil Quality Institute. Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view. (Adobe Acrobat download site.) Managing Cover Crops Profitably -- On-line version of the first editon of the Sustainable Agriculture Network's print handbook. Good general resource with guide to proven covers by region and summaries of more than 30 cover crops and mixes. An even better resource is the all-new 2nd print edition of Managing Cover Crops Profitably University of California SAREP Cover Crop Resource Page -- Extensive site that includes a database of more than 5,000 items, 400 on-line images (unavailable on 3/4/97 visit) and detailed information on 32 cover crop species. Relevance not limited to California growers. Cover Crops Home Page -- Oregon State University Forage Information System -- Topics page provides links to species profiles and other useful information. How to Grow Fresh-Market Tomatoes The Sustainable Way With Organic Mulches -- Brief summary of a publication by USDA's Dr. Aref Abdul-Baki. Describes no-till transplant system similar to that used by Steve Groff. Top of Page Home Cover Crops Menu ©1997 Committee for Sustainable Farm Publishing Please read about our usage permission policy and disclaimer. Send comments, suggestions and questions to the site author: Craig Cramer cdcramer@clarityconnect.com Coded using HoTMetaL Pro 3.0. Best viewed in Netscape 3.0 or later. Please see our credits page for more information. http://sunsite.unc.edu/farming-connection/covercro/home.htm