Mixed Legume Groundcover

Planting mixed legumes has proven to be an effective way to obtain a vegetative ground cover in our demonstration gardens. For example, the fallowed rice plot below contains a mixture of cowpea and lima beans. These species were seeded in an alternating pattern within each row. The photo on the bottom shows a cowpea plant on the left and a lima on the right.

The advantage of this approach is that if one species fails another will likely succeed. We have also seen that a given species may either become dominant or decline depending on seasonal growing conditions.