Soil in need of some love? Sow cover crops in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil.

I recently found a half-empty 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?” giving me a new perspective.

All this is to say, the garden is a bit of a mess. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; 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 hired a professional gardener to remove invasive plants like green alkanet and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. 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 cover crops, as they play a key role in crop rotation for edible gardens. But, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few foraged apples and some hardy herbs.

My ambitions for the garden are modest and consistent – and improving the soil is top of the list. For those wondering, 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. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can control weeds, bring in bees, shelter beneficial insects, and fix nitrogen.

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 grow vigorously rather than look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can dig them into the soil, chop them for mulch, or leave them on the surface for earthworms to incorporate. The real magic happens below the surface.

Autumn is perfect for sowing these cold-season plants. My selection includes forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, a nitrogen-lifter, a weed-suppressor, and field beans.

It feels rewarding in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.