🔗 Share this article Does your garden soil need a boost? Plant green manure in your garden and you’ll reap the benefits. I recently found a half-empty bottle of an energy drink left behind in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. A visiting architect commented, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently. 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. Now, however, some necessary firefighting is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to tackle invasive plants 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. Cover crops act like heroes when it comes to improving soil health. A fellow garden writer has written about cover crops, as they play a key role in crop rotation for edible gardens. But, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few scrumped apples and some hardy herbs. My garden goals are modest and consistent – and enhancing soil health is top of the list. To update concerned readers, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the fences are still wobbly, but the neighbours are on board with the plan. Green manure are like superheroes for soil health. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why unwanted plants pop up. But 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 certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have lovely blooms – but their purpose is to thrive rather than look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can dig them into the soil, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for worms 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, which breaks up heavy earth, a nitrogen-lifter, vetch, and beans that aerate soil. It feels rewarding in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.