I recently found 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?” giving me a new perspective.
In short, the garden is in disarray. Sometimes neglect has its perks; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower growing in the back corner.
This week, though, some necessary firefighting is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to tackle invasive plants like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Then, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.
Cover crops act like heroes when it comes to improving soil health.
A fellow garden writer has written about green manure, as they play a key role in crop rotation for vegetable plots. However, the only things I’m picking from my garden right now are a few scrumped apples and some hardy herbs.
My ambitions for the garden are modest and consistent – and improving the soil is top of the list. For those wondering, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are still wobbly, but the neighbours agree with replacing them.
Green manure are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why unwanted plants pop up. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can control weeds, attract pollinators, shelter beneficial insects, and fix nitrogen.
Cover crops aren’t always showy – 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, cut them for compost, or let them decompose for earthworms to pull down. The real magic happens underground.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these overwintering crops. My selection includes rye grass, which breaks up heavy earth, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and field beans.
There’s satisfaction in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.
