🔗 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 half-empty bottle of Lucozade left behind in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. A visiting architect joked, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently. In short, the garden is a bit of a mess. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; 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 hired a local gardener to remove troublesome weeds like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Then, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops. Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality. My gardening friend Claire has previously discussed 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 scrumped apples and some hardy herbs. My ambitions for the garden are modest and consistent – and improving the soil is top of the list. To update concerned readers, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the fences are still wobbly, but the neighbours agree with the plan. Green manure work wonders for soil health. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, attract pollinators, host pest-eating creatures, and enrich the soil with nutrients. Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and a flowering legume, have pretty flowers – but their purpose is to thrive rather than be admired. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, cut them for compost, or leave them on the surface for worms to pull down. Their work happens below the surface. Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. My selection includes rye grass, which breaks up heavy earth, Italian ryegrass, vetch, and field beans. There’s satisfaction in planting seeds knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.