Want to give your soil some TLC? Plant green manure in your garden and you’ll reap the benefits.
I recently found a half-empty bottle of Lucozade left behind in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. An architect friend commented, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently.
In short, the garden is a bit of a mess. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.
This week, though, some necessary firefighting is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to remove troublesome weeds like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Then, in the newly cleared patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops.
Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.
My gardening friend Claire has previously discussed green manure, as they play a key role in crop rotation for vegetable plots. But, 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 scaffold is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are still wobbly, but the neighbours agree with the plan.
Cover crops are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Soil likes to be covered, which is why weeds appear. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and enrich the soil with nutrients.
Cover crops may not look exciting – though some, like lupins ‘Blue Sonet’ and a flowering legume, have lovely blooms – but their role is to thrive rather than be admired. After they’ve grown, you can dig them into the soil, cut them for compost, or leave them on the surface for worms to pull down. The real magic happens underground.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these overwintering crops. I’ve chosen rye grass, which breaks up heavy earth, Italian ryegrass, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil.
There’s satisfaction in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.
