Want to give your soil some TLC? Plant cover crops in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil.
I recently found a partially finished bottle of an energy drink placed 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. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.
This week, though, some necessary firefighting is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve hired a local gardener to tackle invasive plants like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Then, 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 woody herbs.
My garden goals are simple and steady – and enhancing soil health 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 replacing them.
Cover crops work wonders for soil health. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why weeds appear. 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 pretty flowers – but their purpose is to thrive rather than be admired. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, chop them for mulch, or leave them on the surface for worms to incorporate. The real magic happens below the surface.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. My selection includes rye grass, which breaks up heavy earth, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil.
There’s satisfaction in sowing something knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.