SOH2Multi-species spring-sown cover crop

What it actually is

One thing before anything else, because it changes who this page is for. This action sits in the SFI 2024 expanded offer, and the SFI 2026 offer that followed it does not include it; the Andersons Centre's summary of the 2026 offer lists SOH2 as removed for 2026. The soil health actions still on open offer are CSAM2, CSAM3, SOH1 and SOH3. So if you hold SOH2 in an existing agreement, this page is for you for the rest of that agreement's term; if you are planning a new application, this is not an action you can add to it. Check your own agreement, and treat your agreement documents as the authority on what you hold.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 25, checked 23/08/2026, and The Andersons Centre, SFI and CS summary factsheet, March 2026, checked 23/08/2026.

The action itself: in the spring months, which GOV.UK gives as usually March to May, you sow a cover crop you will not harvest, in the gap between harvesting one cash crop and establishing the next, or following the destruction of a winter cover crop. The mix must contain at least four species, drawn from two or more of four plant families: brassicas, legumes, cereals and grasses (with grasses capped at 25 per cent of the mix by weight), and herbs. A short list of species is prohibited outright, including maize, sorghum and miscanthus. You keep it growing with leafy cover and minimal bare soil, you do not cut it, graze it or apply fertilisers or manures to it by machine, and you destroy it no more than 2 weeks before the next main crop is sown, taking care over compaction, runoff and erosion as you do.

GOV.UK's stated aim is a thriving multi-species cover crop protecting the soil surface, developing root structure, supporting soil biology, reducing nutrient loss, erosion and runoff, and increasing organic matter.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 25, checked 23/08/2026.

What it pays, and what that comes to

The rate is in the panel at the top of this page. Multiplied out:

Source: arithmetic on the payment rate shown at the top of this page, which comes from Tilth's copy of the GOV.UK action catalogue and carries its own last-checked date. The 10 hectares is an illustration.

Is it worth it on your ground?

Step one: the gap has to exist. This action needs a stretch of spring and summer when the field has no cash crop on it, and GOV.UK's advice is that the soil benefits want at least around 8 consecutive weeks of established cover. Fields with that gap have it for a reason: a late-planted vegetable or root crop to follow, a winter cover coming out ahead of a late spring establishment, ground being rested, or a rotation slot that did not fill. If every field goes harvest to drill with no daylight between crops, this action has nowhere to live on your farm, and no arithmetic changes that.

Step two: the seed. Listed prices for mixes sold for this action run from £3.75 to £4.75 a kilogram at stated sowing rates of 15 to 20 kg per hectare, which is roughly £56 to £95 a hectare, annually, since the cover is re-sown each year.

Source: Budget Seeds, own listed prices and stated sowing rates, looked up 23/08/2026. Price your own mix, and check it against the action's rules yourself: at least four species, two or more families, grasses no more than 25 per cent by weight, and none of the prohibited species. Mixes are sold for this action that sit close to those lines, and the invoice naming the species is your evidence either way.

Step three: putting it in and taking it out. The contractor figures are the same as on the winter cover page: direct drilling at £77.69 a hectare, or broadcasting at £35.93 plus £35.19 rolling, and a spraying pass at £16.97 before chemical. Seed plus establishment plus a sprayed destruction lands somewhere around £150 to £190 a hectare at contractor rates, against the higher rate this action pays, so on this page the payment and the full-job cost sit close together, and with your own kit the sum can come out in front.

Source: NAAC contractor price survey 2026 to 2027, published by Farmers Weekly, checked 23/08/2026. Averages of member responses; your own figures are the ones that count.

Step four: what the ground would otherwise have earned. If the gap was real, the answer is nothing, and the payment is close to clean money on ground that was going to sit in stubble or weeds. If the gap only exists because a cash crop was squeezed out, the forgone margin is the true cost, same as the winter cover page but with more of the growing season at stake. And unlike the winter action, there is no grazing allowed here, so no feed value softens the sum.

That last step is Tilth's own reading, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out. The rotation call is yours.

Does it work, and what makes it work better

This section is what we have found in published sources about the practice this action pays for. It is not scheme guidance, it is not Defra's or the RPA's view, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out. We have named every source and given the date we checked it. What it means for your ground is your decision.

The evidence base here is the same one behind the winter cover crop page, CSAM2 on this site, and the fit note for this page has an extra wrinkle: season. Conservation Evidence's five assessments cover the practice of growing cover crops in general. One, Grow cover crops when the field is empty, in their Soil Fertility synopsis, is defined by the field being empty rather than by the calendar. The other four, all called Grow cover crops in arable fields, sit in their Mediterranean Farmland synopsis, from dry-summer climates and heavily in irrigated vegetables, and their studies are overwhelmingly of winter covers. We found one study of summer cover crops among them, and it found inconsistent differences in the following crop's yields. So almost everything below was measured on covers grown in a different season from the one this action pays for, and that should temper how far any of it is carried.

The graded assessments. Conservation Evidence, based at the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, summarises the published studies behind individual conservation actions and has independent subject experts score each one. Effectiveness scores only the size and direction of the reported effects, and they say themselves it does not consider the quantity or quality of the studies. Certainty is the separate score for how many studies there are, how well built they are and how much ground they cover.

Growing cover crops when the field is empty comes out as Beneficial, their top category, on 12 studies, with 75 per cent for effectiveness, 67 per cent for certainty and 16 per cent for harms. The four Mediterranean assessments each score one outcome of the same practice:

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 898, Soil Fertility synopsis, and actions 1345, 1351, 1357 and 1394, Mediterranean Farmland synopsis, all checked 23/08/2026. Cite the first as Key et al. (2020), Enhancing Soil Fertility, pages 613 to 634, in What Works in Conservation 2020, Open Book Publishers, and the other four as Shackelford et al. (2017), Sustainable Agriculture in California and Mediterranean Climates, University of Cambridge.

What the studies found. The full account is on our CSAM2 page, and the short version is this. The soil case is the strong one: more organic matter under covers in a meta-analysis and ten replicated controlled studies, more microbial biomass in five, less erosion and more stable aggregates, and in the soil fertility evidence a British study on sandy soils finding a winter cover cut nitrate leaching by 79 per cent at one site and 42 per cent at another. The following crop is the weak one: lower cash crop yields after covers in six studies in some comparisons, higher in three, mixed in eight and no different in seven, with the panel's category, Likely to be ineffective or harmful, the lowest we have written up anywhere on this site. Eight studies found legume covers gave better following yields than non-legumes, and five found more soil nitrogen after legumes. And the water assessment found covers used water and left less in the soil in several comparisons while cutting leaching and runoff, a trade-off scored in climates where summer water is the limit on cropping.

Conservation Evidence say themselves that studies are not directly comparable or of equal value, and that study size, design, reported metrics and relevance to your own situation matter more than "simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation".

Source: Conservation Evidence, actions 898, 1345, 1351, 1357 and 1394, key messages and supporting evidence from individual studies, all checked 23/08/2026.

What we have not found. Anything measuring SOH2 itself, or a four-species spring-sown cover against simpler or winter-sown ones. Any British study of spring or summer cover cropping in these evidence bases. And any study at all of this action's distinctive rules, the four-species floor, the 25 per cent grass cap, or the two-week destruction window.

What the sources say makes it work better. All of the following comes from the studies listed on those Conservation Evidence pages, and it is a description of what was found rather than advice from us. Legumes are the consistent lever: better following yields in eight studies, more soil nitrogen in five, and greater carbon input in a review's account. Duration matters: longer-term cover cropping produced considerably larger soil carbon gains in that review, and a Spanish study found higher soil quality under long-term covers than short-term, which sits alongside GOV.UK's own advice here that the benefits want at least around 8 consecutive weeks of cover.

Source: Conservation Evidence, actions 898, 1345, 1351 and 1357, key messages and supporting evidence from individual studies, checked 23/08/2026, and GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 25, checked 23/08/2026.

What follows is Tilth's own reading of how those findings sit against this action, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

The water trade-off travels better to this action than to the winter one, and that is worth sitting with. A cover crop stood green through an English winter is not competing with anything for water. A cover crop stood green through May, June and July on light land in a dry year is doing exactly what the Mediterranean studies measured: holding the soil, feeding the biology, and drinking. The two-week destruction window means it is still drinking a fortnight before your next crop goes in. On moisture-retentive ground in a normal season that is a footnote; on drought-prone ground it is the trade the action asks you to make, and nobody has measured it in this country.

The season gap in the evidence cuts both ways, and honesty requires saying so. Nearly everything measured was a winter cover, so the strong soil findings arrive here by extension rather than by measurement. The mechanisms, roots, cover and living matter in the ground, do not care what month it is, but the one summer-cover study in the base found inconsistent yield effects, which is thin ground for confidence in either direction. This is a well-evidenced practice being paid for in its least-evidenced season.

The four-species floor is a rule the evidence neither supports nor undermines, since nobody tested species counts. What the studies do keep rewarding is a legume in the mix, and every listed mix we priced for the money section carries one. On that point at least, the market and the literature agree.

What you actually have to do

Each year of the three year duration, establish a multi-species cover crop during the spring months, which GOV.UK gives as usually March to May, that will not be harvested as a commercial crop. The mix must contain at least four species, including two species from two or more of these families: brassicas, legumes, cereals or grasses, and herbs, with grasses no more than 25 per cent of the mix by weight. The mix must not contain Japanese reed millet, maize, miscanthus, reed canary grass, sorghum varieties, artichokes or sweet fennel, and deep-rooted species must be avoided on areas with identified historic or archaeological features.

Maintain the cover so it can reasonably achieve the action's aim, with leafy vegetation sufficiently well grown to protect the soil surface and minimal bare soil. Do not cut it or graze it with livestock, except as part of destruction, and do not apply fertilisers or manures to it by mechanical means. Do not destroy it more than 2 weeks before the next main crop is sown, and minimise compaction, poaching, runoff and erosion when destroying it.

Temporary multi-species grass leys, multi-species crops grown for harvest, and existing cover crops that are not overseeded do not count. If the agreement's start date is too late for the first spring, establish within 12 months of the start date. In the final year, continue until the next main crop is sown or the action's end date, whichever comes first.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 25, checked 23/08/2026.

The sowing advice, as advice rather than requirement: drilling for germination reliability, broadcasting for cost, rolling after sowing for seed contact and moisture, and remember cultivation and fertiliser or pesticide application within 2 metres of the centre of a hedgerow are prohibited by law regardless of this action.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 25, checked 23/08/2026.

Where it can go, and what rules it out

Agricultural land below the moorland line, on arable land used for crop production under arable or leguminous crop codes (temporary grassland is excluded on this action, unlike the winter cover action), fallow arable land under FA01, and horticultural permanent crops under TC01. SSSIs need Natural England's consent first, and land with historic or archaeological features needs its HEFER checked before the mix is chosen. You can enter the total or part of a parcel, and the action is rotational or static.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 25, checked 23/08/2026.

Things worth watching

This section is Tilth's own reading of where this action is easy to get wrong. It is not scheme guidance, it is not sourced from Defra or the RPA, and none of it adds a requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

The two-week window is tighter than it sounds. Two weeks is one weather delay. If the destruction pass and the drilling date are planned back to back and the sprayer cannot travel, the choice becomes destroying later than planned or drilling later than planned, and only one of those keeps you inside the action. Build the slack into the drilling date, not the destruction date.

No grazing means no grazing. The winter cover action next door allows stock on the cover; this one does not, except in destruction. A farm running both actions in different fields has two different rules in its head, and the sheep do not know which field they are in. Worth a note wherever your grazing plan lives.

Check the grass percentage by weight, not by species count. A mix can carry one grass out of six species and still bust the 25 per cent cap if that grass is the bulk of the bag. Ryegrass is cheap and heavy in mixes sold for cover cropping, which is exactly how a compliant-looking mix goes wrong. The percentage composition on the invoice is the number that matters.

The eight weeks is advisory, the thriving cover is not. GOV.UK suggests around 8 consecutive weeks for the soil benefits, but the requirement is a well-grown leafy cover with minimal bare soil. A mix sown into a dry April seedbed and abandoned can fail that requirement by June. Spring sowing means spring moisture is the establishment risk, the mirror image of the winter action's race against autumn cold.

Overseeding is the one door left open for an existing cover. An existing cover crop only counts if overseeded. If a winter cover is coming out and the field is rolling into this action, the practical question is whether you destroy and re-establish or overseed into it, and only one of those works if you want the winter cover's structure kept.

Keeping the evidence

Also Tilth's own reading. GOV.UK sets the requirements; what follows is a practical suggestion about record keeping.

GOV.UK's examples are field operation records at land parcel level with the seed mix invoices, and photographs or other supporting documentation.

Three dates carry this action: sowing, and it must sit in the spring months, destruction, and the next crop's sowing, which together prove the two-week rule. Record all three against the parcel and the arithmetic is self-evidencing. The invoice does double duty here more than on any other action, because the species count, the families and the grass percentage all live on it. A photograph of the cover at its best, dated, covers the thriving requirement.

Tilth records operations against the parcel with dates, holds invoices against jobs, and lets you attach photographs, so the three dates, the mix and the proof sit together.

The part only your own ground can answer

Whether the gap is real. No survey can see your rotation, and this whole action turns on whether a field truly has eight or more spare weeks of growing season, or whether the payment would quietly be buying them from a cash crop. Your cropping plan answers that field by field, and your yield records answer the follow-on question, what the next crop did after a cover, that the literature cannot. Tilth holds your cropping, your operations and your yields in the same place. Request an invite.