I recently found a half-empty bottle of Lucozade placed in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. An architect friend commented, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” giving me a new perspective.
All this is to say, the garden is in disarray. Sometimes neglect has its perks; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower growing in the back corner.
This week, though, some urgent tidying is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted 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 newly cleared 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 play a key role in crop rotation for vegetable plots. But, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few scrumped apples and some woody herbs.
My ambitions for the garden are simple and steady – and enhancing soil health 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.
Cover crops work wonders for your garden’s foundation. Soil likes to be covered, which is why weeds appear. Yet by sowing vigorous crops, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and enrich the soil with nutrients.
Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like lupins ‘Blue Sonet’ and bird’s foot trefoil, have pretty flowers – but their role is to thrive rather than be admired. Once established, you can turn them under, 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 cold-season plants. My selection includes forage rye, great for clay soil, a nitrogen-lifter, vetch, and field beans.
There’s satisfaction in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – at least above ground.
