Plant roots are critical to the delivery of soil ecosystem services as they directly interact with the soil. Root contribution to soil C is often overlooked as many studies focus on the amount of retained aboveground biomass to preserve soil C. Despite the critical importance of roots, most cover crops (CC) studies only consider aboveground biomass yield when assessing CC benefits. This study aimed to quantify the impacts of CC planting dates, and early and late CC termination with and without residual removal of root biomass yield.