🔗 Share this article Does your garden soil need a boost? Plant green manure in your garden and you’ll reap the benefits. Just the other day, I discovered a half-empty 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. 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. Now, however, some necessary firefighting is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted a local gardener to remove troublesome weeds like a prickly weed and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Next, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops. 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 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 enhancing soil health is top of the list. For those wondering, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the fences 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. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress 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 pretty flowers – but their role 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 earthworms to incorporate. The real magic happens below the surface. Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. My selection includes forage rye, great for clay soil, a nitrogen-lifter, vetch, and field beans. There’s satisfaction in sowing something that won’t stay forever – at least above ground.