Soil in need of some love? Sow green manure in your garden and you’ll improve your yields.
Just the other day, I discovered a half-empty 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.
In short, the garden is in disarray. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.
Now, however, some urgent tidying is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve hired a local gardener to remove troublesome weeds like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. 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 written about green manure, as they play a key role in seasonal planting for edible gardens. 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 improving the soil is my main priority. To update concerned readers, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are still wobbly, but the neighbours are on board with replacing them.
Cover crops are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why weeds appear. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can control weeds, attract pollinators, host pest-eating creatures, and enrich the soil with nutrients.
Cover crops may not look exciting – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have pretty flowers – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than be admired. Once established, you can turn them under, cut them for compost, or leave them on the surface for earthworms to incorporate. Their work happens below the surface.
Autumn is perfect for sowing these overwintering crops. I’ve chosen rye grass, great for clay soil, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil.
There’s satisfaction in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.
