🔗 Share this article Soil in need of some love? Plant cover crops in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil. I recently found a partially finished bottle of Lucozade placed in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. An architect friend commented, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently. In short, 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. Now, however, some necessary firefighting is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to remove invasive plants like green alkanet and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Next, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops. Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality. A fellow garden writer has written about cover crops, as they are essential in seasonal planting for edible gardens. However, 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 modest and consistent – and enhancing soil health is top of the list. For those wondering, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are still wobbly, but the neighbours agree with the plan. Green manure are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why unwanted plants pop up. But by sowing fast-growing plants, you can control weeds, bring in bees, shelter beneficial insects, and enrich the soil with nutrients. Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and a flowering legume, have lovely blooms – but their role is to thrive rather than be admired. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for earthworms to incorporate. The real magic happens below the surface. Now is the ideal time for sowing these overwintering crops. My selection includes forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, Italian ryegrass, vetch, and beans that aerate soil. There’s satisfaction in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.