I recently found a half-empty bottle of an energy drink placed in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. A visiting architect joked, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently.
All this is to say, the garden is a bit of a mess. Sometimes neglect has its perks; 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 hired a local gardener to remove invasive plants like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Next, in the newly cleared patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.
Green manure are superheroes when it comes to improving soil health.
My gardening friend Claire has previously discussed green manure, as they are essential in seasonal planting for vegetable plots. But, the only things I’m picking from my garden right now are a few foraged apples and some woody herbs.
My ambitions for the garden are simple and steady – and improving the soil is my main priority. To update concerned readers, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are still wobbly, but the neighbours are on board with replacing them.
Cover crops work wonders for your garden’s foundation. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why weeds appear. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, shelter beneficial insects, and fix nitrogen.
Green manure plants may not look exciting – though some, like certain lupin varieties and a flowering legume, have pretty flowers – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can dig them into the soil, chop them for mulch, or leave them on the surface for earthworms to pull down. The real magic happens below the surface.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. My selection includes rye grass, great for clay soil, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and field beans.
There’s satisfaction in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.
