Want to give your soil some TLC? Plant green manure in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil.
Just the other day, I discovered a half-empty bottle of an energy drink left behind in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. A visiting architect commented, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” giving me a new perspective.
All this is to say, the garden is a bit of a mess. Sometimes neglect has its perks; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.
This week, though, some urgent tidying is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to tackle 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.
Cover crops act like heroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.
My gardening friend Claire has written about green manure, as they play a key role in crop rotation for vegetable plots. However, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few foraged apples and some hardy herbs.
My ambitions for the garden are modest and consistent – and enhancing soil health is top of the list. To update concerned readers, 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. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. Yet by sowing vigorous crops, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, shelter beneficial insects, and enrich the soil with nutrients.
Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like lupins ‘Blue Sonet’ and bird’s foot trefoil, have pretty flowers – but their purpose is to grow vigorously rather than look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can dig them into the soil, cut them for compost, or let them decompose for earthworms to pull down. Their work happens below the surface.
Autumn is perfect for sowing these overwintering crops. My selection includes forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, Italian ryegrass, a weed-suppressor, and field beans.
It feels rewarding in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.