Diversity in the Ground: Cover Crops, Reseeding, and What's Showing Up in the Soil at VXV Farms

VXV Farms | Regenerative Alberta Living Lab

When Gerald Vandervalk started reseeding some of VXV's older pastures, the thinking wasn't complicated. “We've tried to go with a variety of species, several different legumes and several different grasses, just because each grass and legume has a different root zone and stuff, so we're trying to improve it all.”

That reasoning - different species, different root depths, different jobs in the soil - is straightforward on the surface. But what's showing up in early soil sampling at VXV suggests it may be doing more than improving forage quality.

Roots at different depths

A diverse plant mix does something a monoculture can't. Shallow-rooted species cover the surface and hold moisture. Deeper-rooted species keep accessing water and nutrients further down, maintaining living roots in the soil longer through dry periods. Legumes fix nitrogen. Grasses build structure. Each species contributes something different above and below ground.

The result is a system with more redundancy built in. When one species struggles in a dry stretch, others keep functioning. Ground cover is maintained, living roots stay active longer, and the soil isn't left exposed.

But the relationship between diverse roots and soil health goes deeper than forage production. As roots grow and die back at different depths, they deposit carbon through the soil profile. Those roots also release exudates - carbon compounds that feed soil microbes. When the microbial community is active and well-fed, bacteria and fungi produce polysaccharides and glomalin, natural binding agents that hold sand, silt, and clay together into stable aggregates. Those aggregates create pore structure that allows oxygen to move into the soil, water to infiltrate more easily, and moisture to be retained deeper. Carbon is sequestered further down the profile rather than staying near the surface where it is more vulnerable.

Aggregate stability is one of the soil health indicators the Regenerative Alberta Living Lab is measuring at VXV and across participating operations - alongside carbon and bulk density - because it integrates the biology, chemistry, and physics of a functioning soil system into a single measurable outcome.

What diverse mixes can produce

The goal of a well-designed mix isn't just soil health in the abstract. It's maximizing what the land can produce by using the full vertical space available - different species capturing sunlight at different heights above ground while their roots access moisture and nutrients at different depths below.

At another Living Lab operation, producer Dieter Gagelmans has been running multi-species cover crops with results that show what that vertical diversity can do in practice. In a particularly dry year, Dieter harvested six to seven tons per acre - nearly double the two to three tons typical in similar conditions. His best-performing field to date yielded 12.5 tons per acre, an output that starts to compete with corn silage in terms of biomass. That kind of production from a diverse cover crop mix, under dry conditions, points to what's possible when species are selected to work together rather than in isolation.

At VXV, Gerald has been running multi-species cover crops for green feed on flood-irrigated ground. Early soil sampling through the Living Lab is showing higher carbon levels in those areas. It's early data with four more years of sampling ahead, but the pattern is consistent with what diverse root systems and active soil biology are expected to produce over time.

A resource for producers thinking about species selection

Choosing the right mix isn't straightforward. Species interact with each other, with soil type, with moisture availability, and with timing. A combination that works well in one context may not translate directly to another.

The RA-LL team, working with a student group from NAIT's Script Triad program, built a free online tool to help producers navigate those decisions. The site is inlivingcover.ca, and the Plant Interaction Tool at the centre of it looks like a cover crop periodic table - a clickable compendium of species information drawn from multiple research sources including the Midwest Cover Crops Council, USDA-SARE, and peer-reviewed literature. Producers can explore individual species, see how they interact, and understand what each one contributes to a mix.

A page showing above and below ground plant and root structures is in development and coming soon - a visual tool for producers thinking through what a diverse mix is actually doing at different soil depths, and how to maximize the use of available growing space both above and below ground.

What the soil health framework suggests

The diversity work at VXV touches several of the six soil health principles the Living Lab uses to track whole-farm system evolution - living roots, soil armor, and diversity working together rather than in isolation. Gerald's reseeding decisions and cover crop work didn't start from a framework. They started from a practical question about how to get more from the land. But the outcomes - more ground cover, deeper roots, better moisture retention, active soil biology, and early signals of carbon accumulation - reflect what those principles are designed to support.

No single practice is doing all of that work. It's the combination that matters.

Sharing what works

Gerald doesn't wait for a formal channel to pass on what he's learned. “I like to share. A lot of people come and they're here usually for a long time because they're asking questions, and so I just enjoy sharing what we're doing and what's working.”

That instinct is at the heart of how the Regenerative Alberta Living Lab is designed to function. Across the network of participating operations, producers are working through similar questions - about species selection, water access, grazing timing, and soil health - and the Living Lab connects those experiences so that a result on one farm can inform decisions on another. What Gerald has worked out about diverse root systems, recycled infrastructure, and water-dependent grazing isn't just useful at VXV. It's the kind of grounded, practical knowledge the network exists to move between operations.

For producers who want to dig into species selection before their next conversation with Gerald, inlivingcover.ca is a good place to start.