Allotments 4 All

i know it's not an edible plant, but does anyone know how long i need to keep manure before it is well rotted??

If its horse manure, use it when you need it.

The older the better but dont use fresh manure as it can burn crops. If you are preparing the ground for spring then turning in fresh manure now will be fine.

Usually let mine fester for 6 months or so.

And never plant your carrots/parsnips in new manure..they need last years spent compost...otherwise u'l end up wiv very twisted carrots and parsnips!

When I visit the stables for my manure Kate I always look for the area thats already got the rotted stuff in it, otherwise if its fresh you will have to wait 3/6 months depending on the age of it for it to rot down. As lottie says don't dig any in where you are planting roots, I hope sunny hull is all dried out now, happy manuring.  ;D ;D ;D

We work hand in hand with our local farmer who has two muck heaps which take a year to fill.

Meaning; when he has filled the second one the first one is six months old so he delivers that to our plots for £20 per trailer load.

He only delivers in Sept/Oct which fits in just right with our winter digging.

Obviously he too is going to do his winter spreading around this time so it suits us all.

hi folks ,while we're on this subject I was wondering is it possible to over manure a plot, I acquired another plot and the soil is very poor ,no body to it and it just crumbles like coal dust even when wet .I have got a lorry load of fresh stable manure which I am leaving on top over the winter quite deep  then I thought of planting potatoes next year and putting more manure between the rows as they grow but will this be too much?

We've got a stables on-site, so we've got access to as much free horse manure as we can cope with. I've never known any of us to harm the soil by over-manuring. I do about half the plot every year, either digging it in or top-dressing (and sometimes both).

But it's normally well-rotted. At the moment we're hewing away at a 15-foot high cliff that's about 5 or 6 years old and it's the colour of coal.

Black gold Trevor. ;D
He who knows it all (but he means well ::)) looked at my pile on my plot and said that it should only need manuring every 4 years. Not sure whether I agree with that.

If its well rotted it wont smell so much,infact hardly at all.

Quote from: Emagggie on November 18, 2007, 19:20:27
Black gold Trevor. ;D
He who knows it all (but he means well ::)) looked at my pile on my plot and said that it should only need manuring every 4 years. Not sure whether I agree with that.

it is possible to over manure, balance is everything - we get ours delivered about now and I only plonk it where the spuds are going to go and anywhere that requires it rich and with crop rotation this works out brilliantly. I don't even dig it in just lay in on top and by planting time it tends to get dug in anyway - less is more in my book  ;D

I listened to "Farming Today This Week" yesterday morning, about an organic veg grower running a successful veg box service,  and he said that because he had no stock, he never used manure, partly because if he bought it in, he couldn't know what non-organic stuff the animals had been fed on, and partly because he thought it wasn't necessary: he relied completely on ploughing in carefully planned ground cover crops like clover, etc (on a nine year rotation!) plus he said too much manure led to ?nitrite problems.

I wish I could remember his name because he had some very interesting things to say about climate change and how to cope, and what to do about his farm when oil ran out and there were no more tractors. Heavy horses, obviously, but he was thinking about how much extra land it would take to feed the two he would need, how much more slowly everything would be done, and the fact that to carry on making a modest living, he would have to charge, I think, 4 times more for his produce.

Did anyone hear it, and were you impressed?

 Iain Tolhurst is his name, I now find.

And I think see here for more info. :)

Pity I don't still live in Harefield Trevor - I'd be round your place like a shot, just to give a hand with getting rid of that mountain of black gold, you understand?  ;D ;D.

Tricia

It's OK, Tricia - we can cope! There's plenty of us with barrows at the ready!

I am not usually awake that early to listen to it. Anyway, I have been listening to The Archers. The scriptwriters have introduced shire horses to Lower Loxley for ploughing...

Quote from: artichoke on November 18, 2007, 20:18:06
I listened to "Farming Today This Week" yesterday morning, about an organic veg grower running a successful veg box service,  and he said that because he had no stock, he never used manure, partly because if he bought it in, he couldn't know what non-organic stuff the animals had been fed on, and partly because he thought it wasn't necessary: he relied completely on ploughing in carefully planned ground cover crops like clover, etc (on a nine year rotation!) plus he said too much manure led to ?nitrite problems.

I wish I could remember his name because he had some very interesting things to say about climate change and how to cope, and what to do about his farm when oil ran out and there were no more tractors. Heavy horses, obviously, but he was thinking about how much extra land it would take to feed the two he would need, how much more slowly everything would be done, and the fact that to carry on making a modest living, he would have to charge, I think, 4 times more for his produce.

Did anyone hear it, and were you impressed?

Hi All

A fairly sure way of telling if manure is ready is seeing where the worms are!

They work their way upwards where the manure is fresh and the heat is there.

When you look at a manure heap and dig down to the bottom - you can then tell where the worms are and where you should start digging - downwards!!

I think you can over manure a plot which will not damage the ground but the crops you grow will be very leafy very tall and lush but probably will not do as well as hitting the happy medium.

This year - I haven't got any manure yet - I am laying it on top of deep beds and hopefully the worms will do their magic and take it in.  I haven't decided whether to cover the beds with plastic to avoid losing the manure through the soil if it is a wet winter - or not!! Any ideas folks?

Old Bird

I picked up 6 bags of farmyard manure today for £6 - couldn't get any more in the car. There was no smell at all from the lovely well-rotted stuff which will be spread over my raised beds as soon as it stops tipping it down.

Tricia