🔗 Share this article Does your garden soil need a boost? Plant cover crops in your garden and you’ll improve your yields. Just the other day, I discovered a half-empty bottle of Lucozade 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. All this is to say, the garden is a bit of a mess. Sometimes neglect has its perks; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner. Now, however, some urgent tidying is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to remove invasive plants like a prickly weed and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Then, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops. Green manure are superheroes when it comes to improving soil health. My gardening friend Claire has written about cover crops, as they are essential in seasonal planting for vegetable plots. However, the only things I’m picking from my garden right now are a few foraged apples and some hardy herbs. My garden goals are simple and steady – and improving the soil is my main priority. To update concerned readers, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the fences are still wobbly, but the neighbours agree with the plan. Green manure are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Soil likes to be covered, which is why weeds appear. Yet by sowing vigorous crops, you can control weeds, attract pollinators, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen. Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and a flowering legume, have pretty flowers – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than be admired. Once established, you can dig them into the soil, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for earthworms to pull down. The real magic happens below the surface. Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. I’ve chosen forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, Italian ryegrass, vetch, and beans that aerate soil. It feels rewarding in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.