Utilizing Cover Crops to Provide Nitrogen and Weed Suppression in Mint

The overall goal of the project is to demonstrate the potential for using a cover crop to address nutrient and weed problems in both conventional and organic mint production. The project will determine which of the annual legume cover crop mixtures to be trialed can provide enough weed suppression to reduce or eliminate the need for herbicide treatments. The project will also evaluate how much available nitrogen can be supplied by each of the cover crop mixtures. This would lead to reduction in the need to use soluble sources of nitrogen. Successful use of cover crops could make raising mint for oil under organic farming systems economically viable, reducing the ecological footprint for the production of mint oil. The mint oil industry is very interested in effective ways of reducing inputs to make the production of mint oil more sustainable.