I recently found a half-empty bottle of Lucozade 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.
In short, the garden is in disarray. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower growing 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 open patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.
Cover crops act like heroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.
My gardening friend Claire has written about cover crops, as they are essential in crop rotation for vegetable plots. However, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few scrumped 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 yet to be fixed, but the neighbours are on board with the plan.
Green manure are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, attract pollinators, shelter beneficial insects, and fix nitrogen.
Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have lovely blooms – but their role is to thrive rather than look decorative. Once established, you can dig them into the soil, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for worms to pull down. The real magic happens below the surface.
Now is the ideal time for sowing these overwintering crops. I’ve chosen forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil.
It feels rewarding in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – at least above ground.
