🔗 Share this article Want to give your soil some TLC? Sow green manure in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil. Just the other day, I discovered 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?” giving me a new perspective. In short, 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 urgent tidying is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve hired a local gardener to remove invasive plants like a prickly weed and young tree shoots 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. A fellow garden writer has previously discussed cover crops, as they are essential in crop rotation for edible gardens. But, the only things I’m harvesting 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 top of the list. For those wondering, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are yet to be fixed, but the neighbours agree with replacing them. Cover crops work wonders for soil health. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. But by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and enrich the soil with nutrients. Green manure plants 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 be admired. Once established, you can turn them under, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for worms to pull down. Their work happens below the surface. Autumn is perfect for sowing these overwintering crops. I’ve chosen rye grass, great for clay soil, Italian ryegrass, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil. There’s satisfaction in sowing something that won’t stay forever – at least above ground.