Topic: Manure on Root Veg

[boydzfish]

Hmmm. You learn something every day (Or at least you should!!) Here's me thinking that it is wrong to manure my root crop bed because it is supposed to make the roots split into forks and I have just read that you should actually manure this bed. I must say that I have had patchy results with my carrots and no success with swedes and turnips.

[gwynnethmary]

Where did you read that?

[Lottiman]

Totaly re-write's the rule book for me if that's true

[Belladay]

Me too.  I thought you never put manure down where you are going to grow carrots and parsnips!

[goodlife]

Welll...either way is not strickly true/wrong.
Manure can be use and good soil structure in advantage for growing any crops...BUT ...it is the timing of the manure application that matters.
If the manure is dug into ground now..it has all winter and spring to get 'digested' and the soil in nice and friable for the root crops by late spring/early summer...that stage there should not be anymore identifiable manure lumps to affect the roots.

[BAK]

You should not use fresh manure. If it is fully rotted then it is ok.

Personally, I never manure the root bed. I consider that there are other crops that will benefit more from the manure, as I never have enough to do all the beds.

[Digeroo]

I had a lot of forking in some self sown parsnips a whole year after it had been manured.  It had beans last year.

I have had very good results with putting an inch of recycled compost on top of the bed and sowing onto it.  Far fewer weeds that way.   No problems with forking apart from one which grew like tentacles round a large stone.

[Esplanade]

You should not use fresh manure. If it is fully rotted then it is ok.

Personally, I never manure the root bed. I consider that there are other crops that will benefit more from the manure, as I never have enough to do all the beds.

not without a lot of work.. my back is killing me tonight!!
http://www.pushingupdandelions.co.uk/2012/10/27/extreme-composting-turning-the-heat-up/

sorry for the shameless plug to our blog but it might be interesting for people who are interested in the #no-dig method.

we had snow last night in the NE and hail, sleet today - cant ever recall snow in October before.
Stay warm everyone :-)

Roy and Tanya

[boydzfish]

I have been using a 4 bed method but decided to change to a 3 bed system after getting some literature from Dobies which has Bed 1 with compost or manure growing roots (Carrots and beetroots to be specific). To be fair they do put most of their roots in Bed 3 which has just 'fertilser' presumably granular type but this year I had the split root carrots in a bed whiteout any manure for at least a couple of years. I don't use fresh manure only well rotted and dig it in in the Autumn so perhaps it will have been 'digested' by then - I just thought it a bit unusual that's all. I did hear about a hot bed system where you can use fresh manure (A place near me just dumps bags of the stuff outside the stable gate and it's help yourself just bring back the bags) anyone tried this and how high does the bed need to be?

[davyw1]

I get lost with the different systems that people use, i blame the tablets I'm taking.
I work on a three bed system, the only place that gets manure is where i put the potatoes. this bed is followed on by brasica  And where the brasica came out of the  rootcrop and onions go in
To much manure can be as bad as to little and make the soil to accidy.

My Bracica bed and root beds i use commercial manure IE groworganic raked in along with fertilizer (growmore or fish blood and bone) my onion bed only gets fertilizer (ammonia and fish blood and bone) i do this a couple of week before planting. I then put a ring of fertilizer around each plant when putting them in.

If you want to use hot manure then use it in heat sinks with some sort of raised bed to set potatoes away early,Basically hot manure covered with soil put the sets in cover with soil then cover the top of box/container to keep the heat in and the frost off