Just the other day, I discovered a partially finished bottle of Lucozade placed 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.
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.
This week, though, some necessary firefighting is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve hired a local gardener to remove invasive plants like green alkanet and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Then, in the newly cleared patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.
Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.
A fellow garden writer has written about cover crops, as they are essential in seasonal planting for vegetable plots. But, the only things I’m picking 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 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. But by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, shelter beneficial insects, and fix nitrogen.
Green manure plants aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have pretty flowers – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, chop them for mulch, or leave them on the surface for earthworms to pull down. The real magic happens below the surface.
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 beans that aerate soil.
It feels rewarding in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.
