Cover cropping in the winter is a critical part of building and/or maintaining healthy soils; however the practice is not very common on smaller scale farms in Jefferson County due to lack of education on the topic and funding to purchase appropriate seeds.  The Jefferson County Horticulture Agent partnered with the Jefferson County Soil & Water Conservation District to provide community agricultural sites in Jefferson County with free winter-grow cover crop seed and educational programming to help community agricultural sites overcome the financial and educational barriers to implementing this important conservation practice.

In the months of September and October, Jefferson Co. Horticulture & the Conservation District distributed 2,100 lbs of cover crop seed to 25 different community agriculture sites in Jefferson County. That is enough seed to cover 20 acres of land in Jefferson County. At each site, participants received the seed and one-on-one training for either or both Jefferson Co. Extension & the Conservation District on how to plant and manage the seeds as well as the long-term soil health implications. Participants also left with a flyer that included both written and visual instructions on how to terminate the seeds in the spring.

In December and January, Extension Horticulture and the Conservation District will do a visual inventory of each community agriculture site to evaluate the implementation rate of this program vs the distribution rate.