New Opportunities for Summer Cover Crops

Summer cover crops traditionally have not been used in Rhode Island because of the short summer fallow period. However, a changing climate is creating new opportunities for summer cover crops. As the fall season becomes milder, fall cash crops are now being planted as late as the end of September. This creates an increasing gap period between the harvesting of early summer crops and the planting of fall crops. The fall cash crops are also being harvested later, which means that winter cover crops are planted later and are unable to produce as much biomass as in the past. These shifts in planting times are making traditional winter cover cropping less practical and summer cover cropping more worthwhile.