Workshop: Cocktail Cover Crops – Trials and Techniques

Multi-species cover crop cocktails can create synergistic ecological benefits for your farm or garden – enhancing biodiversity, efficiently capturing and recycling nutrients, and sequestering carbon in the soil. This workshop will explore how to select, mix, and establish various cover crop mixtures. We will also discuss assessment and quantifying how your cover crop practices are impacting soil health.

We will be using a ½ acre fallow vegetable field at Many Hands Organic Farm for demonstration purposes. There will be four different multi-species cover crop trials growing on the farm at the time.  During the workshop Brandon Smith from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Masoud Hashemi from UMass Extension will conduct a number of visual and physical trials on the soil, as well as assess insect biodiversity.

Julie Rawson, farm manager of Many Hands Organic Farm, will also demonstrate no-till techniques, including  cover crop intercropping, use of wood chips, and green pathways and in the remaining 1 ½ acres of vegetable land.

There will have a potluck lunch open to all participants at noon prior to the workshop.

About the Instructors:

Brandon Smith is the Northeast Region Team Leader for the NRCS Soil Health Division. He has provided leadership on implementing soil health assessment and management planning through NRCS programs to other Northeast NRCS and external partners in the region’s varied production systems. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell in 2006 and a M.S. and B.S. from the University of New Hampshire. He has extensive experience with mineral nutrition and root nutrient uptake mechanisms, pH and micronutrient interactions, organic production, cover cropping, and conservation tillage approaches.

Julie Rawson, executive director of NOFA/Mass, has been farming all her life, raising all certified organic vegetables on 1-2 acres for the past 30 years. Her farm is over 80% no till will plans to be fully no till by 2017.

Masoud Hashemi is associate professor at UMass Amherst Stockbridge School of Agriculture. His research activities are mainly focused on the sustainability of farming systems through diversified cropping systems. He is particularly interested in integrating cover crops to enhance nutrient recovery and recycling, weed suppression, and improving general soil health.

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