This is kindof my pet project for the summer. The plan is to grow, and then plant seedlings directly into a cover crop, avoiding tillage in the spring when we're most likely to have major water erosion. In this case, we planted winter rye last fall, and then this spring we scythed it down and planted various brassica seedlings (broccoli, kohlrabi, cabbage, brussell sprouts) into it. A big picture of the test area is shown above.
It has worked allright so far, the rye outcompeted most of the perrenial weeds that might have otherwise been a problem not tilling in the spring, and we haven't seen too much weed seed germination so far. A couple problems with it has been that we cut the rye down a week or two too early (supposed to be after anthers have formed), and so the rye still had a good amount of energy to send up new shoots. This is especially a problem where, as an experiment, i removed the cut rye straw to mulch strawberries with instead of leaving it to cover the soil. As a result, the rye was easily able to grow back, along with other plants, as seen in this brussell sprouts patch (brussell sprouts are circled.:

Where the straw was left on, it served as a mulch to help slow down the rye, and also stopped most other weeds, as can be seen with this broccoli (the main reason why its bigger is probably that it was planted about a week earlier than the brussell sprouts, but the lack of weed pressure is probably also a factor):

As a final, kindof accidental experiment, a portion of the rye didn't grow that well, and it ended up getting displaced by what was largely clover. So we're leaving this on the 4 or so broccoli plants where this happened, to see if the detrimental competition for water and nutrients or the beneficial effect of nitrogen fixation is the main effect of using clover as a living cover crop.

I'm thinking that the negative effect might be stronger, but if i turn out to be wrong, itd be sweet, so i think its worth trying on this small area. We'll try to let you know how it goes.

Nicholas