Covered-Up Cover Crop

Cindy decided to put a cover crop of beans, vetch and three or four other seeds in both the old and one of the new raised beds this winter that can be tilled under and worked into the soil as "green manure" in the spring.

So we were sitting in the hot tub one morning last weekend and soon saw that the California Towhees thought we had provided them with a grand new buffet.  They would fly up, perch on the edge of the plexiglas panels that are supposed to keep the varmints out of the raised beds, then swoop down, peck up a few seeds, and fly off, only to repeat the process moments later.  They managed to gobble quite a bit of seed while we were watching.  Since they're ground feeders, I guess they just got tired of waiting for the House Finches and Goldfinches to drop seed out of the bird feeders.  I thought it could have been worse; it could have been the whole flock of Mourning Doves.

However, Cindy was not prepared to see her whole cover crop go down the gullets of a gang of marauding Towhees.  She covered the bigger bed with a permeable cloth that will allow sun and rain through and used good old-fashioned clothes pins to clip it to the plexiglass panels.

Original raised bed with plexiglass panels

She made a cover for the new bed by cutting up some PVC piping, installing it upright in the soil in the new bed and then tucking half hoops made of black irrigation piping into the PVC pipes.  

New raised bed with hoops

 Then she covered the hoops with the same cloth, creating a simple little greenhouse for her cover crop.

Covered up crop

This should thwart both the birds and the squirrels, we hope, until the cover crop can mature.