Bonus: How Cover Crops Promote Soil Health (feat. Parker Garlitz of True Leaf Market)

0:13 I was honored to do an interview with Parker Garlets of True Leaf Market. He is a wealth of information when it comes to growing just about anything, so when he offered to come on and do a short interview about cover crops, I was thrilled. True Leaf has a long successful history offering seats for just about anything that anyone would want to grow, and sustainable soil supplements to keep the soil healthy. I could talk about true leaf and soil health all day, but I think it's better to hear it from the expert. So without further ado, here's my interview with Parker Garlets of True Leaf Market.

1:00 Welcome Parker. I'm so happy to have you on company. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be with you. Can you tell us a little bit about you and True Leaf Market and how you bet? My name is Parker Garlets. I'm one of the co founders of True Leaf Market, and True Leaf Market is primarily more anything else as seed company. We also sell a lot of other stuff like you know, starts and some supplies and you know other things, and we're more than just a garden seed company. We have a full range of of course, garden seeds or flower vegetable, but we also carry microgreen seeds and sprouting seeds, and grain seeds and cover crop seeds and all kinds of other specialty seeds. And how long have you been in business? Well, so that's a that's a weird question, because we have acquired We've gone through some mergers and some acquisitions, so we have seed company brands that, believe it or not, date back over one hundred years, but obviously not me. So my sister and I started a company called Living Whole Foods in the year two thousand and we started selling wheat, grass growing kits and sprouting supplies online, and in twenty fourteen we merged with Mountain Valley's Seed Company, and along the way, my sister and I had acquired one of our competitors, a company called Handy Pantry. Andy Pantry was founded in I thinkteen seventy four, and as coincidence would have it, Mountain Valley Seed Company was also founded in nineteen seventy four. So truly, if

2:32 market has been around as a brand since twenty fourteen, but all of our pieces and parts and components go arguably back to nineteen seventy four or earlier, depending on your take. We acquired a seed company called Kitazawa Seed Company. They specialized in Japanese and other Asian varieties, and they were founded in nineteen seventeen. We're very proud of that brand and are committed to growing it and helping people discover new and fun and interesting Asian varieties. That's fantastic. I was looking into your website and when you became one of my sponsors, I was all over that website just wondering what I was going to grow next.

3:17 We've got a lot there. There's a lot. There's a lot, boy, Yeah, and there's some fun stuff there. There's some really fun absolutely. Okay, So let's talk about cover crops. How do they were? How what? How do you plant them? How do you bet? Well? It might might be good to maybe just give a little context and history of what cover crops are. So cover crops have been used for thousands of years in agriculture as a way to rehabilitate soil. Right. I think Fritz Hauber, the German scientists synthesize the mode so we could have chemical fertilizers sometime about you know, one hundred hundred and ten years ago, something along those lines. And prior to that, you know, if you wanted soil health, it was a challenge and you you know, you'd have to fertilize with maneuver or batwano or I mean, there's lots of sources, but they were scarce and not sustainable. So the most sustainable way to rehabilitate soil was using a cover crop. And certain cover crops have certain benefits like they'll put nitrogen back into the soil or do other important things, right, So it's been a very popular technique for commercial agriculture, and even now in the age of chemical fertilizers, a lot of commercial farms will grow cover crops because they provide benefits that even an NPK fertilizer K. So the latest greatest thing, right

4:55 is the idea of taking this very powerful commercial agricu culture idea and using it at a backyard garden or even in a container guard and growing cover crops to rehabilitate soil and soil health. Right, So that's kind of the idea. And cover crops are basically just a crop that you grow off season. So if you harvest your crops, say in you know, August or September or October or November, depending on where in the world you are. You know what zone you grow in. Then you can plant a cover crop immediately after that and let that crop just overwinter. In a lot of areas that cover crop will winter kill, and if it doesn't winter kill, you may need determinated in the spring. And there's different techniques. Some people want to plow it under and others others are adherence, some kind of a more of a no till method. Either way, cover crops. Cover crops work and provide all kinds of potential benefits to soil. And we have lots and lots and lots of our home garden customers who have never tried a cover crop tried it for the first year and then send us an email or called us in and said, it's unbelievable, how what a difference it made in the subsequent year in my dark kind of thing. And the cool thing is, cover crops are easy to grow. You just spread the scene, make sure that get water, make sure that you get established, and let it let it go through the winter. And dollar for dollar, there's probably nothing you can do

6:25 as cheap and effective as rehabilitating soil. With a cover crop, right, that kind of makes sense. Is that the answer you're looking for on that? That's kind of a that is exactly the answer. Yeah, No, that's great, that's perfect. So we were talking a little bit through email about pollinators. What does a cover crop do for well, So one thing that a cover crop does do for pollinators is, you know, during the spring and during the summer, pollinators have lots and lots and lots of options, right. But as you start to get a little bit later in the season, or maybe in the very early spring, one of the cool things about cover crops is they tend to be pretty hardy crops. Right, Like, yo, I'm in I'm in a zone five B, right, and in my zone Utah, there are weeds that will get them selves nicely established starting in early February, right, which is maddening on one hand, but impressive on the other hand. Well, cover crops are just as hardy as those early weeds. They will grow and get and they'll take hold even in cold temperatures, and they're they're typically quite cold hardy. So in whether you plant a cover crop in the early early spring or you plant out of the late fall, let it over winter, cover crops can provide some blooms and

7:56 some options for pollinators even when there's not much else out there, So it's always a nice thing. And of course if you're planning like cover crops for forage for you know, chickens or goats or cattle or whatever it is, you know a lot of these have clovers in them, a low growing like a white Dutch clover or a crimson clover. Those are typically good components of cover crops, and those blooms are very popular for pollinators, both bees and butterflies. Oh that's great, that's wonderful. Perfect. So when we go back to the soil, does it promote microbe grow? It does a whole bunch of stuff. I've got a little note here so I can make sure that that I hit everything, and I always give you a list of potential benefits. Now, these very based on the type of crop that you grow, right, Not every cover crop is the same, and so that that that raises a question. Well, from my particular garden, what cover crop do I grow? Well, I mean, experienced farmers will will do things like you know, they'll test the pH at their soil and they'll do all kinds of scientific studies and tests on their soil and diagnose soil and then grow exactly the right cover crop for what they want to accomplish. Well, that's probably beyond the scope of ninety nine point you know, five percent of gardeners out there. So we put together an all purpose cover crop mix has a little bit of everything in there, and it's a very very good cover crop.

9:28 So you just look for our all purpose garden cover crop mix and it does everything that cover crops do. And here's here's kind of a bullet point list. Right, the first and main thing is it adds biomass to the soil. Now, if you if you are a tiller, right, it's obvious where that biomass is going to come from and end up underneath the soil. But what if you're a no till gardment, where does the biomass come from? Well, if you imagine looking at a plant kind of if you had a vision where you could look at fifty under the soil at the same time that you looked above the soil. For a lot of crops, especially grain crops, and there's our cover crop makes has several grains in it and mustards, especially the root mass is huge, and oftentimes there's more biomass in the root system than below the ground than there is above the ground, if that makes sense. So even if you're a no till farmer, great, terminate that crop, let it lie down, and the biomass that's grown in the off season under the ground provides a tremendous amount of organic matter. Right.

10:43 Green manure is a popular way to describe a cover crop, so adding biomass to the soil, it'll do stuff like keep soil bacteria healthy and active, right, So it's not necessarily adding bacteria to the soil. Although our cover crop mix is pre inoculated with Rhizobium bacteria which create which act in tandem with legumes and pull nitrogen out of the air and make nitrogen nodules in the root system. And that's how cover crops add nitrogen back into the soil, right, and nitrogen of course, there's want of the key components in NK so so yeah, in terms of the microbiome of the soil, it's critical it does add nutrients to the soil. It can pull n it can pull nitrogen out of the air, and cover crops with deep tap roots like mustards can pull trace minerals from deep in the soil and pull them up and make them available for a garden crop. Right, one of my little pet theories.

11:46 And you can put an asterisk on this, right, this is it's crazy opinion. Right, But you know, for a hundred years now, what have agricult commercial agricultural been fertilizing with. Well, they've been putting and pique nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium back into the soil and as as as as nature would have it, those three things are all you need to grow big, healthy crops. But what's missing When was the last time somebody added selenium or vanadium or chromium or copper or zake or sulfur or any of those other trace minerals that are beneficial for few of human health. When we're those added back to the soil, right, so cover crops can sometimes pull those trace nutrients up from deep. Then of course you can also fertilize with the trace mineral fertilizer and add some of those types of things back into your garden.

12:41 They certainly attract beneficial insects of pollinators. They improve soil structure. If you have sandy soil, it will help with that. If you have really thick clay soil or cover crop mix contains dichon radish driller radish, which just to break that soil up and give it more of a loamy body, So that's good. Cover crops could prevent erosion if you have wind or rain over the you know, in the off season, and prevent loss of topsoil. Some cover crops like mustards can help control pests, right, the spicy chemical and mustard. A lot of bugs don't like it. Nematodes don't like it, so it tends to drive them away. Traps moisture when it's used as a mulch. If you're a no till farmer, right, competes for weeds, which is very nice. Can be used as a forage. It's often quite beautiful. And one of the biggest crazy benefits of all is how cheap it is. Right we're a typical home garden. You're talking ten to fifteen dollars worth of cover crop seed to plant a thorough cover crop. And the benefit that it has on your soil is you know, wonderful. And it's a lot less work and a lot easier than haul and collpost. Right, Oh yeah, it's like yeah, it's you know, it's it creates its own compost in the soil directly. It's a wonderful little strategy and it's as old, you know, it's as old as your oldest ancestor going back, you

14:15 know, one hundred, two hundred generations that use this technique as a as a gardening and at an agriculture technique. It's really kind of a neat idea and it's simple, it's so easy to do. It's a wonderful idea, and it sounds like it has it has more benefits than we even think of it typically does it. I Mean, it's just it's almost such a no brainer that it should be part of everybody's standard garden strategy. But it's really only been in the past, you know, ten or fifteen years that cover crops have been started to become popular for home gardening. I mean, there's always been home gardeners that did it, but in terms of getting a little more mainstream for gardening, I mean, growing up, growing up my family garden, we never did a cover crop. Didn't even know that, we didn't know that it was a thing, right, But now you'll see that it's it's quite a bit more common. It against very very easy to do, so it's uh, yeah, it's kind of it's kind of a neat idea. It is a great idea. Now I have a question for you.

15:24 I live in an in an apartment and so I grow I have a big garden bed in my apartment. Would it would a cover crop help my garden bed because the soil in there gets pretty absolutely so, we have we have a lot of customers who live in an apartment and have a have a like an apartment patio or porch container garden. Right, well, they'll grow in in in large pots or buckets or containers. Add at the end of the season, I mean, and you do need a lot of cover crop seed in order to rehabilitate a container, right, I mean it's literally petties worth of cover crop seed. But yeah, you can go cover crops in the off season in a garden bed or even hanging baskets or deck reel planters, any of that can benefit from cover crop. Absolutely perfect, perfect.

16:22 Yeah, I'll probably be on the website again getting getting some cover crops. We're very glad and like I say that, we have there's a couple of things. We have a whole bunch of different options, right, we carry dozens and dozens and dozens of cover crops, a lot of those. Or for small and medium farms who self diagnose and no, oh I need harry vetch or I need you know, I need legumes. Whatever it is that they're doing, they have a specific need and they come in and buy cover crops in bulk for that particular need. But for most home gardeners, yeah, don't even sweat it. Just go for the all purpose garden cover crop mix and it does a little bit of everything. And we also on our website have a free cover crop PDF that if you do want to dig in and really learn about individual cover crops. What do the grains do, what do the leg rooms do? What does you know? What do the field ps do and why are they an important component? What about driller radish or turnips? What do those do in terms of soil health. You can dig in on that free cover crop growing Guide and it's a free pdf and you can find it in the cover crop section of our of our website, very easy, and they have a bunch of PDFs for just to we do.

17:41 We've got general gardening PDFs, We've got Microgreens PDFs and Sprouse PDFs and all kinds of stuff, and they're all free and we're glad to have anybody come in and download those. We also sell them in a little booklet form, but it's a physical thing that we've got a print and ship, so you know, it's like a little pocket reference guide for gardening. You're welcome to purchase that, but we have it available as a free PDF for anybody who wants it. I downloaded a bunch of them when the first time that I went in and I got Oh, I got more seeds than I knew what to do with. I'm still I'm still experimenting, but I downloaded the PDFs just so that I could be better at starting seeds, because I'm terrible at starting seeds. They do great for a little while, and then I overwatered them, and that's one of the that's one of the great things about gardening.

18:38 It does take a little bit of trial and error, and it does take a little experimentation. And if it was if it was a complete no brainer, it wouldn't be fun. Rights the challenge sometimes it's what makes it fun, right right, Well, Parker, I so appreciate you coming on. Truly, it is one of my favorite It's been my favorite sponsor ever since you've been with me, and I'm just we're so grateful. We're so grateful to you and grateful for your recommendations and for your listeners. Thank you so much for coming and thank you for all the fantastic information. And I was just please, we're at your service. Thank you so much. Thank you, and have a great night. I'm hoping you all enjoyed that chat.

19:44 I know I did. I can do research all day long and get my fact straight and present them well, but it's always nice to have an expert in the field come on and talk about his trade. Of course, I have a deal on your nex purchase from true Leaf Market. True Leaf is offering my listeners ten dollars off any order of fifty dollars or more with promo code COFD ten. Just go to www dot truleafmarket dot com and use promo code cofd ten to start getting your garden ready for spring. Free shipping is included on orders of seventy five dollars or more. The all purpose Garden cover Crop mix is waiting for you. Head to wwwtruleafmarket dot com. And use promo code COFD ten to get ten dollars off your first order of fifty dollars. This offer is good through October thirty feet twenty twenty three. Limit one use per customer. I'm now officially on hiatus, but that doesn't mean some really good isn't going to be coming your way. It just means that you're going to have to wait for season seven to get it. I'll see you in a month, and until then, get that soil healthy.