Want to give your soil some TLC? Sow green manure in your garden and you’ll enrich your soil.

I recently found 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?” which made me see it differently.

All this is to say, the garden is in disarray. But there’s a lot to be said for negligence; after returning from holiday, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.

This week, though, some necessary firefighting is underway. Being six months pregnant, I’ve enlisted a professional gardener to remove troublesome weeds like green alkanet and young tree shoots from the neighbour’s tree, while leaving the good stuff. Then, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.

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

My gardening friend Claire has written about cover crops, as they play a key role in seasonal planting for vegetable plots. But, 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 modest and consistent – and enhancing soil health is my main priority. For those wondering, the scaffolding is for roof repairs, and the garden boundaries are still wobbly, but the neighbours are on board with replacing them.

Green manure are like superheroes for your garden’s foundation. Bare soil invites weeds, which is why weeds appear. Yet by sowing fast-growing plants, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, shelter beneficial insects, and enrich the soil with nutrients.

Green manure plants aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and bird’s foot trefoil, have pretty flowers – but their purpose is to thrive rather than look decorative. After they’ve grown, you can turn them under, chop them for mulch, or let them decompose for worms 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, a weed-suppressor, and beans that aerate soil.

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