Going green

Toby doffs his cap to some of the most important plants he will be sowing in late summer: his precious green manures

- Toby Buckland

EVERY manure has its own properties and purpose. Pig poop stinks to high heaven but is the best thing to encourage tired hybrid teas to, well, come up roses, while pong-free alpaca pellets are so mild you can bung the dung straight on the garden without composting first.

But of all the cow pies, meadow muffins, and farmyard fertilizers, there is only one manure that I’m happy to wade up to my armpits in, and that’s green manure.

Green manures, as I’m sure you know, are crops grown for the benefit of the soil. Rather than being harvested and eaten by us, they are dug in or left to rot down and release their nutrients where they are.

They’ve been around for thousands of years, and from the monsoon-soaked soils of India to the sun-baked fields of Ancient Greece, farmers in the know have sown them to fill the gaps as edible crops are harvested – protecting the soil and locking in nutrients until the growing season starts again.