Category Archives: Garden Advice

Growing Buckwheat as a Cover Crop

July 9, 2026 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is a grain crop or short-season cover crop that’s perfect for backyard gardeners and small farmers. It’s quick-growing and can help growers attract pollinators, suppress weeds, add organic matter to the soil, and break down slow-release fertilizers. It’s easy to grow and easy to sneak in between summer and fall crops. Learn more about the benefits of growing buckwheat as a cover crop and how to use it in your crop rotation.

Why Grow Buckwheat?

Buckwheat offers many benefits depending on how you use it.

Weed Suppression

Buckwheat grows at near lightning speed. It’s ready in 30 to 45 days as a green manure crop or 80 days for grain production. This fast growth means that buckwheat is excellent for smothering warm-weather annual weeds. For best weed suppression, you want to sow buckwheat fairly densely. We recommend about one pound of seed for every 400 square feet.

Nurse Crop for Clover

Typically, we experts recommend buckwheat as a spring and summer cover crop, but in the southeast we also recommend it for fall and early winter when paired with crimson clover or other cool-season cover crops. Buckwheat acts as a nurse crop for the crimson clover during the heat of the day, and in the fall, it is killed by frost.

Support Beneficial Insects

Buckwheat’s dense, branching clusters of flowers are rich sources of nectar that support bees and other beneficial insects. It’s especially effective in attracting parasitic wasps, pirate bugs, lacewings, lady beetles, hover flies, and other predatory insects which feed on pests like aphids, thrips, caterpillars, and other pests.

Buckwheat flowers in about four to five weeks and continues flowering for up to 10 weeks. If you want to support beneficial insects like pirate bugs, let your buckwheat flower for at least 20 days so that the insects have time to complete their life cycle.

Break Down Slow-Release Fertilizers

Buckwheat’s unique root system produces mild acids, allowing the plants to break down and take up phosphorous and other minerals. When the buckwheat residue decomposes, these minerals become accessible to other crops.

Soil Improvement

For those looking to loosen and improve their soil, buckwheat is also a great option. In the top ten inches of soil, buckwheat creates a dense root system that leaves the soil loose and perfect for the next crop in a low or no-till system.

While buckwheat doesn’t fix nitrogen like legume cover crops do, it can help hold it. The plants grow quickly and take up nitrogen from the soil, preventing its loss through erosion. When you’re ready for the next crop, till in the buckwheat and it will release the nitrogen back into the soil.

When left until flowering, buckwheat also produces a good bit of organic matter, which you can till in or cut and leave on the surface. When left on the surface, it works well as a mulch for fall crops.

Adding Buckwheat to Your Rotation

Buckwheat seeds rot easily in cold, wet soil, and the plant is very susceptible to frost, so wait until your soil has warmed and all danger of frost has passed before planting buckwheat in spring. Burying buckwheat too deeply can also rot the seeds, but you don’t want to leave it on the surface either. After broadcasting your buckwheat seeds, it’s best to rake or harrow them into the soil. As your buckwheat germinates, reseed any bare spots for best results.

Buckwheat will grow well in infertile soil, but it will do poorly in heavy, wet soil. It’s often a top choice for newly cleared land, as nitrogen-tie up from woody debris and decaying roots won’t impact its growth.

We frequently use buckwheat’s fast growth to fill in gaps in the summer and keep soil covered between spring or summer and fall crops. Extreme afternoon heat in the summer can cause buckwheat to wilt, but it will bounce back overnight. In hot, dry periods, you’ll need to water buckwheat.

You can also rely on buckwheat as a quick-growing emergency cover crop in the event of crop failure. We like to leave the soil bare as little as possible.

In fall and winter, you can use buckwheat as a nurse crop for cool-season cover crops before frost. You can also allow buckwheat to winter-kill and use it as a mulch for planting late winter or early spring crops.

Managing Buckwheat

Buckwheat rarely has problems with pests or diseases, but it can become a bit of a nuisance in itself. To avoid buckwheat self-seeding, cut or kill your crop before it has flowered for more than a week. Thankfully, the tender stems make buckwheat easy to scythe or mow down.

If you don’t need that plot in the following season or year, you can also allow buckwheat to self-seed. As buckwheat is frost-sensitive, you may want to replace it with a cold-tolerant legume or other cover crop for winter.

Garden Advice

Organic Cabbage Worm Control

July 2, 2026 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Heads of cabbage turned to lace, broccoli florets filled with little green caterpillars, or white moths circling your kale patch? You’ve met one of the gardener’s dreaded opponents, the cabbage worm. In this post, we’ll dive into cabbage worms and how gardeners can work to discourage their presence in the garden and protect their crops.

What are Cabbage Worms?

The name cabbage worm refers to at least four different species of Lepidoptera, an order of winged insects that includes moths and butterflies. You may also hear folks refer to the same four species as cabbage loopers or cabbage moths.

Unfortunately, these voracious insects don’t stop at cabbages. They’ll feed on any cole crop or crop that’s in the brassica family, including cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, radishes, mustards, collards, kale, kohlrabi, and turnips.

The moths lay eggs on the plants in spring and early summer. When the eggs hatch, the caterpillars feed on your brassicas.

How to Prevent Cabbage Worms

One of the best ways to keep cabbage worm damage to a minimum is to take preventative steps. If you’re reading this because you’re already in the thick of it, don’t worry; we’ll include steps for managing cabbage worms below.

Clean Up the Garden Every Fall

You may have seen posts and articles talking about how a messy garden is better for pollinators, and this is totally true! Many butterfly, bee, and other beneficial insect species overwinter on plant debris, weedy patches, and other organic material. It’s also true for cabbage moths.

While it’s a good idea to leave a messy section of native wildflower stalks for overwintering beneficial insects, if you’ve had any issues with cabbage worms, it’s best to clean up all your brassica crops. Remove dead plant material and weeds. If the infestation is bad, you can also till in the fall to make sure you expose any hiding in the soil debris.

Grow Your Brassicas Under Floating Row Cover

One of the easiest, most foolproof ways to protect your brassicas is to grow them under floating row cover. It’s essentially like creating a screened-in porch for your plants. It will keep out all the flying insects.

You can purchase row cover and easy-to-use wire hoops to hold it over your plants from most vegetable garden supply companies. Row cover can be expensive. As an alternative, we’ve used tulle, the lightweight fabric used in bridal veils and tutus. Usually, you can find it by a bolt for cheap. If you’re using another alternative material, just ensure it’s thin and breathable, letting in light and air.

While standard row cover is water permeable, you may still need to water your crops a bit more often. Row cover works great with drip-tape irrigation for a low-maintenance option.

Dill flowers — PatríciaR, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Encourage Beneficial Insects and Birds

Cabbage worms are a nuisance in the garden, but not all insects are an issue. Beneficial insects, like parasitic wasp species like the Braconid wasp (Cotesia glomerata) will feed on cabbage moth eggs and caterpillars.

Studies have shown that feeding on nectar, and pollen occasionally extends the lifespan of parasitic wasps. These wasps prefer flowers with dense clusters of small flowers called umbels. Planting flowering species like dill, fennel, sweet alyssum, yarrow, and buckwheat can help attract them to your garden and keep them around longer.

Want more tips for attracting beneficial insects to your garden? Read our full post Pests & Pollination: Attract Beneficial Insects.

Many songbirds also feed on cabbage worm caterpillars, particularly when they’re feeding young in the nest. Attracting birds like goldfinches, bluebirds, house sparrows, Carolina wrens, and chickadees to your garden can help reduce cabbage worm populations.

Check out our blog post Planning a Bird-Friendly Garden for advice.

Try Interplanting or Companion Planting

In addition to planting companion plants to attract beneficial insects and birds, you can also plant crops to deter cabbage moths from laying eggs on your crops. While there are no good studies available, anecdotally dense interplanting can also help reduce cabbage worm damage.

To interplant brassicas, spread out your plants in a bed with other plants between them. Many gardeners report success with fragrant crops like onions, sage, chives, cilantro, wormwood, mint, garlic, thyme, and marigolds.

How to Manage Cabbage Worms

Unfortunately, most cabbage worm prevention strategies must be started in advance. Thankfully, if you’re in the thick of it now, there are a few other options.

Spray Your Plants with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis)

BT is an organic pesticide made from a bacterium that naturally occurs in soils throughout the world. While it’s completely safe for humans and pets, BT kills cabbage worms when they ingest it.

While BT is organic, it’s important to realize that it affects all moth and butterfly species, so you should apply it carefully and sparingly.

Handpick the Caterpillars and Swat the Moths

This is my least favorite solution, but some dedicated gardeners make it work. For caterpillars, carry a bucket of soapy water and drop the caterpillars into it . Regularly check the underside of the leaves.

For the moths, some gardeners have luck killing them with a tennis racket. Just make sure you positively identify the species and aren’t killing beneficial species of moths and butterflies by mistake!

Spray Your Plants with a Neem Oil Solution

Some gardeners also use neem oil, another organic pesticide. Unlike BT, it doesn’t kill the caterpillars but disrupts their feeding cycle and deters the moths.

You can create a solution to spray your brassicas using about one gallon of water, two tablespoons of neem oil, and a few drops of dish soap or insecticidal soap. Ensure you spray the undersides of the leaves thoroughly.

Cabbage worms can heavily impact your brassica harvest. If they’re an issue in your garden, take these steps to reduce them in your garden and protect your plants.

Garden Advice

Modern Victory Garden: High Yielding Crops

June 23, 2026 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

We love growing and sharing fun, unique crops like Imperial Star Artichokes, Short-Toothed Mountain Mint, Mexican Sour Gherkins, and Cactus-Flowered Zinnias. But lately, we’ve gotten a lot of questions and comments from folks on Facebook wanting more information about staple crops or crops that could make up more bulk in a family’s diet.

Understandably, the memory of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rising cost of living, and people’s desire to control part of their own food supply is driving a renewed interest in seed saving, chicken keeping, and history-inspired “victory gardens.”

Whether you’re interested in lowering your grocery bill, keeping more of your diet organic, reducing your food miles, or improving your family and community’s self-reliance, here are some high yielding varieties to consider for your modern victory garden.

What Staple Crops Should I Grow?

There is no one-size fits all staple crop. What you should grow in your garden to maximize production will depend on your family’s tastes, your climate, and your garden’s size and soil conditions. What you plant also depends on the time of year.

Your family’s taste and what you will actually use should be one of the most important considerations. It’s likely that your family will maintain the ability to visit the grocery store, so if you plant a ton of butternut squash and no one enjoys it, it will probably go to waste. Similarly, you also want to be mindful of what you have the time to process. Cucumbers are highly productive, but if you don’t have time to pickle them, you’ll quickly end up with a lot of waste if you over-plant.

What grows well in your area will also play a huge role in determining what crops you should select to maximize production. If you’re new to gardening, it’s helpful to talk to neighbors or a local master gardener group for suggestions. A soil test is also a good idea before you plant.

Space is also a factor. If you just have a few raised beds, planting several successions of quick crops like summer squash, bush beans, and collards will provide a lot more food than waiting for a couple of winter squash plants to mature over a long season.

Think about what produce your family purchases most, and then look at this list and see what crops make sense in your garden.

Varieties to Maximize Production

There are hundreds of varieties to choose from, but these are a few of our favorites for their ease of growing, good production, and disease tolerance. They are divided into two categories: long-season crops, which you can generally only plant once in spring, and short-season crops, which are often ideal for succession planting and fall gardens.

Long Season Crops

Here are some of the long-season crops that are highly productive. Besides a long season, many of them also require ample space and may be better suited to large gardens.

Magic Cushaw Winter Squash (110 days)

“We named it Magic Cushaw because it is so good and always pulls through, resistant to most everything, and now it is the only winter squash we grow,” writes grower Julia Asherman.

This unique squash produces an amazing mix of shapes and sizes, including round, oval, cheese-type pumpkins, and long-necked ones. Each fruit weighs about 5 to 30 pounds and stores well.

Beauregard Sweet Potatoes (100 days)

Beauregard is among the most popular sweet potato varieties in the United States, and for good reason. It’s reliable, highly productive, and disease-resistant. Beauregard has dense orange flesh that’s sweet, creamy, and nutty when boiled or baked.

Developed by Louisiana State University, Beauregard Sweet Potatoes are a great way to maximize your calories per acre in a home garden, particularly in the Southeast. They also keep well in storage.

*Growers in northern climates may have better production from traditional or “Irish” potato varieties.

Amish Paste Tomatoes (80 days)

Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason. Amish Paste tomatoes are the largest paste tomatoes we offer, and they have a robust flavor that matches their size! They’re ideal for canning and make an incredible sauce. They’re also juicy enough to use as a slicing tomato.

Amish Paste produces tall plants and heavy yields, so you’ll need a sturdy trellis to keep up with them. Use appropriate spacing and prune plants to improve air circulation and keep the plants healthy.

Tennessee Red Cob Dent Corn (120 days)

This heirloom corn dates back to before 1900 and is always high-yielding, producing up to 150 bushels per acre here in Virginia. Our original seedstock was supplied by Harold Jerrell, who reported that in 1995 this variety produced a good crop on only 2 inches of rain from mid-June until the first of September. It was one of the driest years on record in his growing area in Virginia and was the only variety that produced.

Tennessee Red Cob grows 10 to 13-foot sturdy stalks that you can use to support pole beans. Each stalk produces one or two 6 to 9 inch ears per stalk. This corn makes delicious cornbread and polenta.

*Growers in northern climates may have better luck with a flint variety like Floriani Red Flint, which is better suited to cool spring soil.

Iron and Clay Southern Peas (60-100 days)

Today, farmers often plant these vigorous, drought-hardy plants as nitrogen-fixing cover crops or grown for animal fodder. However, they’re also a tasty, highly productive staple crop.

Iron and Clay Peas came to this region through the forced migration of enslaved Africans and have long been grown as crops of survival and resilience. After the Civil War, Iron and Clay peas helped sustain newly freed Black communities, a history documented in George Washington Carver’s 1908 Cookbook of Field Pea Recipes.

You can enjoy the peas at several stages and use them as a short or long season crop. In about 60 days, you can harvest the peas as snap peas/green pods before the seeds swell in the pods. For green shell peas, harvest when the pods are filled but still plump and soft. In about 100 days, when the seeds turn brown and dry, you can harvest them for storage and winter use.

Short Season Crops

Here are some short-season crops that are highly productive. Many of these produce over a long season, are great for succession planting, or will grow as a fall crop. These are perfect for starting now if you still have space to fill in your garden.

Tromboncino Summer Squash (60 days)

This reliable Italian heirloom produces long fruits that curve to a bell at one end. When they’re young and light green, they make a tasty summer squash, but they also mature to tan with flavor much like a butternut. These dual-purpose, moschata type squashes bear all season in the south where others fail, thanks to their resistance to vine borers.

Tromboncino squash grow on long vines, which you can trellis for easy harvesting. For summer squash, harvest the fruits when they’re 8 to 10 inches long for tender flesh and sweet flavor. Allow them to mature full on the vine until they’re hard and tan for butternut-type squash and winter storage.

Tiger Eye Bush Bean (55 to 80 days)

Tiger Eye Bush Beans are a productive crop that offers a lot of versatility. At around 55 days, harvest and enjoy them as snap beans or wait until the pods fill out and use the white beans as shelly beans. Finally, you can let them full mature and dry to their beautiful pattern.

At their mature dry bean stage, Tiger Eye beans have a similar flavor to pinto beans. They’re rich and deliciously creamy. While cooking, their skins melt away, perfect for refried beans.

Georgia Cabbage Collards (70 days)

Georgia Cabbage Collards are a standout from the Heirloom Collard Project. The seeds originally came from Bobby Prevatte, whose grandparents grew them near Lumberton, NC.

These plants are vigorous, high-yielding, and hardy to 20°F. Georgia Cabbage Collards produce semi-prostrate plants with a moderate tendency to head. The sweet and tender yellow-green leaves have a rich flavor some describe as nutty and cabbage-like.

Straight Eight Cucumbers (57 days)

Straight Eight Cucumbers were the All-American Selection winner in 1935, and they’re still highly dependable, productive, disease-resistant, and high-yielding today. They produce very uniform, deep green, 8-inch fruits about 2½ inches in diameter with an exceptional flavor.

While Straight Eights are a slicing cucumber, they also make excellent pickles if you pick them small. For canning, harvest them when they’re 4 to 5 inches long.

Early Flat Dutch Cabbage (85 days)

Early Flat Dutch is an old heirloom that dates to pre-1875 or possibly pre-1855. It’s one of our favorite, reliable varieties for the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic thanks to its incredible heat-resistance.

This cabbage produces large, flat heads weighing 6 to 10 pounds each. Early Flat Dutch is a great sauerkraut variety and the best variety for storage.

These are just a few of the great varieties you can use to produce a massive harvest. There are also many other high-yielding crops you could include in your garden, like pole beans, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, or sorghum. You may need to experiment for a few seasons to find what works best for your taste, climate, and soil. Happy growing!

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