Do you have spare space in your garden that is taken over by weeds? Try summer cover crops during the growing season to enrich your soil for subsequent planting and to smother the weeds. Cover crops ...

BUCKWHEAT: IT’S NOT just for pancakes anymore. While pancakes are one of the finest culinary pleasures humankind has devised, buckwheat is a much more important crop than it typically receives credit ...

Buckwheat is a cover crop with a bonus -- seeds that can be ground into flour. And according to the Oregon State University Extension Service, both home gardeners and farmers are finding buckwheat to ...

I’m a big fan of cover crops on the farm and in the garden. Cover crops are not harvested. Instead they’re used for other purposes, such as preventing erosion or improving soil tilth. One of my ...

You may have heard the saying, “nature abhors a vacuum.” Although it applies to many situations, farmers and gardeners have a unique understanding. They know that leaving a plot of land open ...

With summer over, many of us are putting our garden beds to sleep until spring. But if you’re leaving your beds bare, you are missing out on an opportunity to improve your soil and give your garden a ...

There's a lot more to the stuff most people consider just dirt. A healthy handful of soil has billions (yes, billions) of microorganisms in it, members of a truly humbling food web below our noses ...

PLYMOUTH NOTCH — Buckwheat used to be called the “lazy farmer’s crop.” It would grow anywhere, the soil didn’t have to be that fertile, and farmers could plant it in June and still harvest a good crop ...

WADENA, Minn. - Business was slow when Tom Bilek helped launch the Buckwheat Growers Association of Minnesota nearly two decades ago. He says, not altogether in jest, “we were like the Maytag ...

Although there really isn’t an “offseason” when crops don’t grow well here in the Bay Area, I am always amazed by the number of gardeners I know who don’t plant a cool-season garden. Since I come from ...