When speaking to diversified vegetable crop growers, one of the most often cited challenges is the management of weeds. This issue is even more prevalent for organic growers who lack any effective chemical weed control method and rely on crews to mechanically remove weeds from the fields. One possible alternative is the use of terminated cover crops as mulch on the soil surface to act as a physical barrier to prevent weed emergence. This cover crop mulch can be advantageous for a grower in addition to cover crops improving soil health and providing a habitat for beneficial insects. This experiment compared vegetable beds with cover crops terminated with a roller crimper to bare soil beds on short (squash), intermediate (pepper), and long (eggplant) growing vegetable crops and assessed crop performance. In both 2023 and 2024 a cover crop mix of rye and field peas was successfully terminated and provided ample biomass on the soil surface at the time of vegetable transplanting and throughout their grower and harvest. We found that cover cropped treatments led to improvements in soil fertility, higher numbers of soil-dwelling beneficial insects, and lower weed pressure that led to significantly higher yields. These results demonstrate a potential system for organic growers to integrate into their operation as a practice that can reduce time and labor costs for weed management along with improving the soil fertility and creating a system requiring fewer inputs.
