Soil in need of some love? Plant green manure in your garden and you’ll reap the benefits.

Just the other day, I discovered a half-empty bottle of an energy drink left behind in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. An architect friend commented, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” giving me a new perspective.

All this is to say, the garden is in disarray. 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. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to remove troublesome weeds like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Next, in the newly cleared patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.

Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.

A fellow garden writer has written about green manure, as they are essential in crop rotation for edible gardens. 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 improving the soil is my main priority. To update concerned readers, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are still wobbly, but the neighbours are on board with replacing them.

Cover crops work wonders for soil health. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why weeds appear. But by sowing vigorous crops, you can suppress weeds, attract pollinators, shelter beneficial insects, and enrich the soil with nutrients.

Green manure plants may not look exciting – though some, like lupins ‘Blue Sonet’ and bird’s foot trefoil, have pretty flowers – but their role is to thrive rather than look decorative. Once established, you can turn them under, cut them for compost, or let them decompose for earthworms to pull down. Their work happens underground.

Now is the ideal time for sowing these cold-season plants. My selection includes forage rye, great for clay soil, Italian ryegrass, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil.

There’s satisfaction in sowing something knowing it’s temporary – on the surface, anyway.