Want to give your soil some TLC? Sow green manure 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?” 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; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.
This week, though, some necessary firefighting is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to remove invasive plants 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 green manure.
Cover crops act like heroes when it comes to improving soil health.
My gardening friend Claire has written about cover crops, as they play a key role in crop rotation for edible gardens. But, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few scrumped apples and some hardy herbs.
My ambitions for the garden are modest and consistent – and enhancing soil health is my main priority. For those wondering, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the fences are yet to be fixed, but the neighbours are on board with the plan.
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 fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen.
Cover crops 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 look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can dig them into the soil, chop them for mulch, or leave them on the surface for earthworms to incorporate. The real magic happens underground.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. My selection includes forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and field beans.
There’s satisfaction in sowing something knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.
