Soil in need of some love? Sow cover crops in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil.
I recently found a partially finished bottle of Lucozade left behind in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. An architect friend joked, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” giving me a new perspective.
All this is to say, the garden is in disarray. Sometimes neglect has its perks; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.
Now, however, some urgent tidying is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to remove invasive plants like a prickly weed and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Next, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.
Green manure are superheroes when it comes to improving soil health.
My gardening friend Claire has previously discussed green manure, as they play a key role in seasonal planting for edible gardens. However, the only things I’m picking from my garden right now are a few scrumped apples and some woody herbs.
My garden goals are modest and consistent – and improving the soil is my main priority. For those wondering, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are yet to be fixed, but the neighbours agree with replacing them.
Cover crops are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why unwanted plants pop up. Yet by sowing vigorous crops, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen.
Green manure plants may not look exciting – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have lovely blooms – but their role is to thrive rather than be admired. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, cut them for compost, or let them decompose for earthworms to pull down. The real magic happens below the surface.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. I’ve chosen forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, Italian ryegrass, a weed-suppressor, and field beans.
It feels rewarding in planting seeds that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.
