Integrating Summer Cover Crops for Fall Vegetable Production in the South, Poster Board #064

Field experiments and trainings are underway to assess and demonstrate summer cover crops for use in fall organic vegetable cropping systems in the Deep South.  The three-year USDA Southern-SARE-funded project includes research at the Truck Crops Branch in Crystal Springs, Mississippi and Burden Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as well as a grower location in each state.  Field research to date has included large replicated screening trials of commercially available legume and non-legume monoculture and polyculture summer cover crops in both states.  The screening trials have revealed some promising cover crop species for unfertilized, non-irrigated summer biomass production and soil building.  Based on these screening trials and previous research, three summer cover crops (Sunn hemp, Crotalaria juncea; sesame, Sesamum indicum; and sorghum-sudan grass, Sorghum bicolor x S. bicolor var. sudanese) and a mix of sesame and crotalaria are being evaluated along with composted chicken litter applications as part of a fall organic vegetable production system.  Summer cover crop biomass production, soil fertility and organic matter, and fall broccoli yield and mineral nutrition are being evaluated.  On-farm research studies have begun based on the preliminary findings at the campus sites.