Pacific Northwest Gardening: Anyone do the green manure thing?, 1 by mauryhillfarm

mauryhillfarm wrote:
I ended up with a kind of accidental cover crop this winter that worked pretty well, and was free seed. As Katye mentioned above, sometimes you can let things go to seed in the garden, and let them naturally populate open areas until you are ready to plant something else. I did that with a couple of parsnip plants last fall. The flower stalks were so impressively architectural, I just left them in for fun, and then the seeds spread over 3 beds. I didn't know if the little plants would make it through the winter, but they did very well and effectively kept my soil covered through rain and snow. Some of the roots are big enough to harvest now, and my family has had several meals of them. Others were too thickly sown to be of edible use, but I'm pulling those up and mulching and composting them. The ground beneath is a very nice texture and ready to plant in with minimal cultivating.