🔗 Share this article Soil in need of some love? Plant green manure in your garden and you’ll improve your yields. I recently found a partially finished bottle of an energy drink placed in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. An architect friend joked, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently. In short, the garden is a bit of a mess. Sometimes neglect has its perks; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower growing in the back corner. This week, though, some necessary firefighting 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, but keeping desirable plants. Then, in the newly cleared 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 foraged apples and some woody 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 fences are still wobbly, but the neighbours are on board with the plan. Cover crops work wonders 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 control weeds, attract pollinators, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen. Green manure plants may not look exciting – though some, like certain lupin varieties and a flowering legume, have lovely blooms – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than be admired. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for worms to pull down. The real magic happens underground. Autumn is perfect for sowing these cold-season plants. I’ve chosen rye grass, great for clay soil, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and field beans. There’s satisfaction in planting seeds that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.