The Heritage Herb Gardens at the Ozark Folk Center grace the park with visual colors and textures, sweet and pungent aromas. With their natural display, they help us to interpret the history of the human use of plants.

Cover crops such as oats, wheat, annual rye, Australian peas, hairy vetch and several types of clover feed garden soil with green manure when they are turned or tilled in the spring. Gardeners must commit to tilling or turning in the perennial vetch and clover in the spring or these plants will develop roots that will be almost impossible to eliminate from the garden.  

Cover crops are planted on bare soil anywhere to prevent erosion. Those of us living in the Ozarks are seeing erosion on bare hillsides in our yards and on places where trees have been cut or have fallen. The ill effects of heavy rains on bare soil are prevented in two ways. First, individual rain droplets fall on the leaves, following down the stem to the roots and are directed deeply into the soil. Leaves break the fall of rain drops. Instead of splashing on the surface of ground and running off with precious top soil in the rivulets, the water is dispersed into the soil. 

The legumes which include both hairy vetch, Australian peas and clover, fix nitrogen in the soil. They store nitrogen from the atmosphere in their root nodules. The nitrogen will feed food crops next year if these seed are planted now.

Frank Finger of Nitron Industries in Fayetteville, Arkansas was a speaker during the Herb Harvest Fall Festival. Nitron sells organic fertilizers and soil conditioners. He donated packages of this seed to the Herb Garden Committee of the Committee of 100. The proceeds of the sale of this seed will directly benefit the Heritage Herb Gardens. The seed is available in the Herb Shoppe in the Craft Village here at the Ozark Folk Center. If I don’t see you in the future—I’ll see you in the pasture sowing autumn cover crops.