Cover crops offer greater benefits in terms of improving soil quality and affect the resident microbial community. Residue management of cover crops (i.e., their biomass returned to the soil) could play a key role in positive feedbacks of soil-biota changes. So, if grow leafy vegetables as a cover crop, what is the best way to incorporate their residue into the soil. Need suggestions and recommendations. Thanks!
Dear Ahmad Ali many thanks for your interesting technical question. Several potentially useful research articles about tis topic can be found right here on ResearchGate. Please have a look e.g. at the following relevant articles entitled
1. Cover crop residue management for optimizing weed control
Article Cover crop residue management for optimizing weed control
2. The use of Crop Residues on the Farm
Article The use of Crop Residues on the Farm
Both articles are freely available as public full texts on RG. Also please see the following article which can be freely downloaded from the general internet:
Impacts of Crop Residue and Cover Crops on Soil Hydrological Properties, Soil Water Storage and Water Use Efficiency of Soybean Crop
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/215596569.pdf
(see attached)
Ahmad Ali please do not assume cover crop residue needs to be removed or mechanically incorporated. Consider no-till. Retaining cover crop surface residue has many benefits (e.g. decrease soil temperature, decrease surface wind velocity, decrease erosion, decrease fuel usage from tilling, maintains sub-soil structure, and extends benefits by lengthening breakdown). See these links: Cover Crops | No-till on the Plains | Agriculture Production Systems Modeling Nature;
harvesting_residue.pdf (notill.org);
Cover Crops: The Foundation of Organic No-Till | EcoFarming Daily;
Long-term use of cover crops and no-till shift soil microbial community life strategies in agricultural soil (plos.org)
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