Soil in need of some love? Plant green manure in your garden and you will reap the benefits Gardening advice
I I just removed a half-full bottle of Lucozade from my Euphorbia tub. He left it there on the scaffolding. “Are you sure this is Lucozade?” ventured a visiting architect, making me see the energy drink in a new light.
All of which means: the garden is a mess. But there is a lot to be said for neglect; I came back from vacation to find a sunflower had appeared in the back corner.
However, this week sees some necessary firefighting operations. I’m six months pregnant and extremely stressed, so I’ve enlisted the help of a local gardener to deal with the more noxious intruders (like green alcanite, which makes my ankles bite whenever I hand out laundry, and some of the many robinia seedlings that have emerged from the neighbor’s big, beautiful tree) while leaving the good stuff behind. Then, in the spots that open up, I will plant green manure.
My beloved columnist, Claire, has addressed the issue of green manure in these pages before, because it plays an important role in the broader crop cycle on a plot of edible land. But the only thing I eat from the garden at the moment is an apple or two and some woody herbs.
My ambitions for the garden are simple and consistent – improving the soil is at the top of the list. (And an update for those good readers who are worried, I’m wasting a roof box on a fence: scaffolding is for the roof, and the fences keep swaying dangerously in the wind. And the neighbors are on board with us to replace them.)
Green manure is a superhero when it comes to improving soil health. The earth likes to be covered – that’s why “weeds” appear. But you can help defeat weeds, bring in biodiversity through pollinators, provide shelter for other creatures that eat pests, and fix and retain nitrogen in your soil by planting crops that grow just as hard as weeds.
Green manure plants may not look that interesting – although some, like lupine ‘Blue Sonnet’ (Lupinus Angustifoliwe) The bird’s foot-shaped trilobite has beautiful flowers – but the goal is to grow, rather than be admired. Once done, you can either dig them into your soil, cut them up for compost, or leave them on the surface for worms to break down. Their work is done underground.
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It’s time to plant these winter crops. I chose forage rye, which is particularly good in clay soils, Italian ryegrass to raise nitrates, vetch to suppress weeds and fix nitrogen, and field beans, which make light roots out of heavy soil.
It’s good to plant something in the garden, and it’s even better to know that it won’t stay there permanently — above ground, at least.