Another area where plants such as these help us out, other than adding diversity to the salad mix��is in our effort to produce biomass above ground and in the root zone for the purpose of building soil organic matter. If you�ve been tilling for years and have your soil down to zero organic matter�.then these plants will be some of the best options you have in the beginning. Why? Because they will tolerate poor conditions, deer browsing, and still produce biomass for the soil. There is a reason why these type plants start dominating in agricultural fields�..Its because we as humans have created the situation that gives them an extreme advantage over more finicky food crops. Growing in a very diverse �prairie� type mix, with good soil health, that is left undisturbed from tillage....these plants will simply fill their niche and not take over.

What would happen if you terminated all of these plants and planted a crop of say only cowpeas and sunflowers in the same field???��They likely would be decimated and produce little biomass to feed back to the soil. Therefore, you would actually be regressing from a soil health standpoint as decomposition of OM never stops whether you produce more biomass or not.

One more aspect that leaving the diversity provides you from a soil health standpoint is underground in the root system. We are not only producing biomass above ground but we are also producing it below ground as well through the root systems of the plants. An example is the extensive root system of cereal rye. Let me see if I can explain this without hunting down a picture�� So lets imagine we are looking at a soil profile picture from the surface down to 3-4 ft. One of our goals from a soil health perspective is to fill up that profile with plants roots as deep as we can get them. Adding diversity to the field adds many different shaped root systems, which fills that soil profile at many different levels. When the plants die, these root systems rot and become organic matter.