Cover Cropping for Soil Health: Field Day at FoodLink Community Farm

Sep 29, 2025 | NYSH News

By Elizabeth Henderson

At a moment in US history when there is so much uncertainty, division, anger, soil health enthusiasts came together in a joyous and educational celebration that could serve as a model public-private partnership with local gardeners, city, county,  and federal agencies, and not-for-profits cooperating in mutual support and respect, in service of one of the most basic necessities for human resilience.

Lori Koenick, CCE Cornell Vegetable Agent, lead organizer of this event, and Frank Keophetlasy, farm manager, welcomed the 65 participants to the September 16, 2025 field day at the new Edible Education Center at the FoodLink Community Farm on Lexington Avenue in Rochester. Starting with the basics, Michael Glos, New York Soil Health program, and Nicole Kubiczki, Natural Resources Conservation Service, introduced the meaning and significance of healthy soil: healthy soils are living ecosystems teeming with microorganisms, worms, nematodes and countless other companions who feed crops as they feed and eat one another as they cycle nutrients and moisture. Kubiczki recited the NRCS soil health basics:

  • Keep the soil covered in green plants for as many months as possible – Maximize photosynthesis –
  • Keep the fungi happy! Fungi go deep with their hyphae for all the best plant food. Tillage disrupts their delicate network of hyphae.
  • Keep a diversity of species above ground to enhance species diversity below ground
  • Support microbes, fungi and bacteria, to keep them working – feed them with compost, vermicompost
  • Minimize tillage – bare soil loses carbon – use permanent vegetable bed systems
  • Over the winter plant cover crops or mulch

Glos used the Cornell Soil Health Trailer to show how differently bare soils and soils planted densely with grasses or cover crops respond to heavy rain.  The rain runs right through the bare soils taking large amounts of soil with it. The densely planted soils absorb the water and lose very few particles as run-off.

Lauren Goulet drove this home with a simple demonstration pouring water on loose flour compared to a slice of bread. The water runs off the flour but sinks deeply into the bread that yeast’s microorganisms have given structure and form.

The summer’s extensive reconstruction of the farm allowed farm manager John Miller to plant 24 of the new raised beds in an array of cover crops – grasses (rye, tritcale, oats), legumes (clovers, vetch, winter peas), buckwheat, sunflowers and mixtures. Yours truly, local organic farmer/gardener Elizabeth Henderson pointed to these living examples as she launched the “Cover Crop Guide for Urban Gardens” that she and Koi Mendez just completed and will distribute broadly to help gardeners plant the right cover crops for every season. NY Soil Health provided funding for the soil “zine.” Miller then demonstrated techniques for terminating the cover crops to derive the most benefit for the soil. None of the methods involved pulling up the roots. The Root Show, performed by Kubiczki, Glos and Koenick, revealed why: there is vastly more to cover crop roots than what we see above the soil. All that organic matter is rich feed for the microherd and creates channels through the soil.

Koi Mendez, lead farmer at 490 Farmers, shared the many good practices for growing, underseeding, combining, and timing cover crops that they have learned from Jamaican ancestors and Rochester experience. To conclude the afternoon, Glos and Mallory Hohl, CCE Harvest NY, explained the latest approaches to protecting ourselves from the heavy metals that may contaminate urban garden soils.

And to top off all the learning, no one went home empty-handed. Steph Rawleigh, educator for the Taproot Collective, gave each gardener a generous bag of cover crop seed, a mixture of oats and winter peas, carefully inoculated with microorganisms that enhance their growth. The rains of this week create perfect conditions so that no gardens go into winter this year naked.

Elizabeth Henderson is an organic farmer. She is the co-chair of the Interstate Council policy committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association and represents the Interstate Council on the Board of the Agricultural Justice Project.

Resources shared at the event: