Does your garden soil need a boost? Plant green manure in your garden and you’ll improve your yields.

Just the other day, I discovered a partially finished bottle of Lucozade 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 a bit of a mess. Sometimes neglect has its perks; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.

This week, though, some urgent tidying is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to tackle troublesome weeds like a prickly weed and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Next, in the newly cleared patches, I’ll be sowing cover crops.

Cover crops act like heroes 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 scrumped apples and some hardy herbs.

My ambitions for the garden are simple and steady – and improving the soil is top of the list. To update concerned readers, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are yet to be fixed, but the neighbours are on board with replacing them.

Green manure work wonders for your garden’s foundation. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why weeds appear. But by sowing vigorous crops, you can suppress weeds, attract pollinators, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen.

Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have lovely blooms – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than be admired. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for earthworms to incorporate. The real magic happens below the surface.

Now is the ideal time for sowing these overwintering crops. I’ve chosen forage rye, great for clay soil, Italian ryegrass, vetch, and field beans.

There’s satisfaction in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.