Soil in need of some love? Sow cover crops in your garden and you’ll reap the benefits.
I recently found a partially finished bottle of an energy drink 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.
All this is to say, the garden is in disarray. 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 urgent tidying is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to tackle troublesome weeds like green alkanet and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Next, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops.
Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.
My gardening friend Claire has written about green manure, as they are essential in seasonal planting for vegetable plots. But, the only things I’m harvesting 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 fences are yet to be fixed, but the neighbours agree with replacing them.
Cover crops work wonders for your garden’s foundation. Soil likes to be covered, which is why weeds appear. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, attract pollinators, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen.
Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like lupins ‘Blue Sonet’ and bird’s foot trefoil, have pretty flowers – but their purpose is to grow vigorously rather than look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can dig them into the soil, cut them for compost, or let them decompose for worms to pull down. Their work happens below the surface.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these overwintering crops. My selection includes rye grass, great for clay soil, Italian ryegrass, vetch, and field beans.
There’s satisfaction in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.
