Ellen from Ellen Mary gardening I've spent the afternoon here down my allotment it's being chilly but I've warmed up with a lot of digging so this year I've decided I'm going to spread some green manure seeds on some of my areas here down the plot and green manures absolutely wonderful for restoring and nitrogen in the soil basically the plant takes nitrates from the soil they store it in the roots and then you dig it back in next year between februari and april so you're replenishing the soil it's really fantastic I've used it before and it's worked really well so here's how first things first we want to get rid of all those weeds because they're green manure suppresses new weed growth to get rid of everything that's there using your home or by hand weeding then you want to rake over the soil get rid of any weeds left on top of the surface and level it out and also right away any of those large chunks of soil always read the packet before you so green manures but generally they're so late summer into early autumn with their ability to kind of pick up all those nutrients which prevents them being washed away over the winter time means that they're ideal for using over large surfaces of exposed soil in the wintertime or indeed in between crops where there's nothing growing and of course it's sustainable it's green and it's far better than using chemical fertilizers so after throwing your seeds across the soil you give them a rake into the surface and then once you're ready for growing next year you chop off the foliage and you leave it to wilt and after digging it in you need to make sure that you don't start growing for another couple of weeks so green manure seeds are really good especially if you haven't got access to any well-rotted manure and replenishing all the nutrients in the soil like that means you're going to be ready to start growing again next year and good soil means happy plants