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.
All this is to say, the garden is in disarray. Sometimes neglect has its perks; 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 tackle invasive plants like a prickly weed and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Then, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops.
Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.
A fellow garden writer has written about green manure, as they are essential in crop rotation for vegetable plots. However, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few scrumped apples and some hardy herbs.
My garden goals are simple and steady – and improving the soil is top of the list. For those wondering, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the fences are still wobbly, but the neighbours are on board with replacing them.
Green manure work wonders for your garden’s foundation. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. But by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and enrich the soil with nutrients.
Green manure plants aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and a flowering legume, have lovely blooms – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than be admired. Once established, you can dig them into the soil, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for worms to pull down. Their work 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, vetch, and field beans.
It feels rewarding in planting seeds that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.
