It’s no secret. I am in love with Gabe Brown.
I was first introduced to Mr. Brown while watching YT videos on regenerative agriculture. He’s got a tonnnnn of videos on the topic that I highly recommend checking out.
One of my favorites is on Cover Cropping. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuwwfL2o9d4
It’s an hour, yeah. But amazing! Gabe Brown is not only an incredible farmer but also a very entertaining speaker.
In this photo, you can see that Gabe Brown never takes a plant out of the ground. Instead, he tramples them down once they are no longer productive. This makes for an excellent sort of “compost” cycle and keeps the nutrients where they belong – on the fields, not the landfills. He grows the new crops right over the old ones. This is a form of cover cropping.
It’s been a few months since I’ve watched this to be honest. But the main takeaways that I can remember is that cover cropping helps to reduce the amount of tilling and pesticide use required to grow adequate amounts of crops.
When you switch from rows and rows of a single crop, you’re making life really hard for nature and the soil. Nothing in nature has endless straight rows of the same plant.
You need diversity! Cover cropping helps the soil maintain a diverse biome. Diversity is essential.
If there is a pest that loves one plant, and if that is the only plant that exists, then that plant is going to get destroyed by the pest because there are no other plants around that can detract that plant. Nature has multiple protection systems like this in place to keep everything in balance. When we take away the diversity, we take away the balance. Cover cropping helps maintain a balance and ensure the soil is in good shape. Soil retains more water and anchors soil in place when the soil is abundantly COVERED by multiple CROPS (ie Cover Cropping)!
I hope you watch the video the next time you have some free time! Let me know what you think.
As always,
In Soil We Trust
Tiffany
ps. This is Mr. Brown’s website: http://brownsranch.us/
Bring Back Soil 
I’ve been trying to do this with my plants!
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😉 hope you’ve been having good luck!
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