Want to give your soil some TLC? Sow cover crops in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil.
I recently found a half-empty bottle of Lucozade 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. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.
This week, though, some urgent tidying is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve hired a local gardener to tackle troublesome weeds 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 improving soil health.
A fellow garden writer has written about cover crops, as they play a key role in crop rotation for edible gardens. 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 simple and steady – and enhancing soil health is top of the list. To update concerned readers, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are yet to be fixed, but the neighbours agree with replacing them.
Cover crops are like superheroes for soil health. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. But by sowing vigorous crops, you can control weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen.
Green manure plants may not look exciting – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have lovely blooms – 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 forage rye, great for clay soil, a nitrogen-lifter, vetch, and beans that aerate soil.
It feels rewarding in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.