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 commented, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently.
In short, the garden is a bit of a mess. Sometimes neglect has its perks; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower growing in the back corner.
Now, however, some necessary firefighting is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted 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 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 play a key role in seasonal planting for edible gardens. 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 yet to be fixed, but the neighbours agree with replacing them.
Green manure work wonders 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.
Green manure plants aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have lovely blooms – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than look decorative. Once established, you can turn them under, cut them for compost, or leave them on the surface for earthworms to pull down. The real magic happens underground.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. I’ve chosen forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil.
It feels rewarding in sowing something knowing it’s temporary – at least above ground.
