Purchasing Cover Crop Seed

Once you know how much you need, purchase your cover crop from one of several options:

You can purchase most cover crop seeds from local stores. Smaller, mom-and-pop stores that also sell farm and animal keeping products (like feed and feed and watering containers) or local feed mills are usually your best bet and typically have, by far, the best prices. 

You can also get them from most mail-order and online garden retailers like Johnny’s or others, but their cover crops are usually more expensive per pound, even before adding in shipping costs, and usually can’t be purchased in the smaller, idiosyncratic quantities (like 3 1/4 lbs) that you’ll typically need and are easy to get at your local mom-and-pop stores.

Plus, it’s a great way to spend money at local businesses that actually meet this need much better than anyone else. 

It might help to bring cash, though. Since their price per pound for the seed is pretty low and the amount of seed most home gardeners need is usually ridiculously small, your bill might come to only a few dollars or even less. I’m always embarrassed paying $2 at a small, local business with a credit card, since my understanding is that, for smaller merchants like this, the costs to process small credit card transactions are a good chunk of what they’d otherwise make on the sale.