Demonstration Site Summary: Cover crops in vineyard

Overview

Updated April 2026

Oranje Tractor Farm is an 8 ha regenerative property near Albany comprising 2.6 ha of grape vines, a heritage orchard of 170 fruit trees, and a tasting room offering immersive wine experiences.

The demonstration involves establishing diverse vineyard inter-row cover crops, under-vine cover crops, and a native seed production area. The aim is to improve soil health, vine and tree resilience, and whole-farm ecosystem function.

Warm season, cool season and under-vine seed mixes were selected and coated with Johnson–Su compost slurry, mycorrhizal fungi, molasses and milk, and a mineral mix spray applied.

Cover crop species:

• Warm Season:Lab lab, chicory, corn, sunflower, shirohie millet, Japanese millet, cowpea, sorghum, safflower, buckwheat.
• Cool Season:Vetch, forage brassica, peas, Winfred brassica, lucerne, oats, wheat, linseed, tillage radish, serradella.
• Under-Vine:Arial clover, shaftal, crimson, arrowleaf, strawberry clover, sub-clover, serradella, trikkala.

Minimum-till sowing took place in March 2025 using a vertical-slice lawn cultivator and hand-broadcasting in narrow strips.

Throughout the season, extensive observations were recorded along with soil pH, earthworm counts, nodulation and topsoil depth.

Key findings so far…

• ‘Cover Crop Field Day’ was a successful day to showcase the demonstration to farmers in the area looking to trial similar practices and dive into the fundamentals of soil health and cover crop essentials.
• Excluding sheep to allow plants and microbes to go to seed allowed mid-row cover crops to produce abundant seed likely to self-regenerate.
• The lawn scarifier proved to be an excellent narrow minimum-till tool.
• High biomass providing summer soil cover and moisture retention.
• Chicory establishing as a perennial summer-active species.
• Under-vine clovers germinated and are setting seed for next season.

See more:

• Case study
• ‘Cover Crop Field Day’ video
• Oranje Tractor Wine’s cover crop project on Google Earth
• Oranje Tractor on Instagram

This demonstration site was funded through our Accelerating the Adoption of Regenerative Agriculture program, supported by funding through the Western Australian Government’s State NRM Program.