[kirby-11]

I've nearly read most of John's book, The Essential Allotment Guide. It talks about either treating the land in the winter or a few week before planting out. How do you treat the land? Do you dig a patch and either put the manure or fertilizer down, cover up with the dug up ground and keep doing that till all is down or simply add it the top and leave? Or do you add it to the top and kind of mix it in to the ground if you'd have it?

Please help!

[gowing238]

If your leaving it to overwinter, dig out all the weeds, then cover in manure and let the worms take the goodness down into the ground, then dig it all in in the spring

[Fisherman]

Manure on a bed rotational basis in late autumn / winter taking care not to manure areas where plants don't like or need manure i.e. carrots, beans etc. Manure can be either dug in or spread over the surface. I tend to ridge my soil / manure so that weather can break it down over winter. Fertilizers are applied as required 4 - 6 weeks before planting or sowing out with an occasional top dressing applied during the season. I just use Fish, Blood & Bone.

The only beds I manure are the potato and brassica beds. The other beds get the old compost in order to improve the soil structure by applying organic matter and sand.

[Zippy]

Last and this year I manured the potato beds in late autumn and used the entire contents of my compost bin to plant the seed potatoes in the following spring. The result was nice clean potatoes which had hardly touched the soil beneath.

I also pile manure onto the miscellaneous bed (squashes, beetroot, celeriac, chard etc) and let the worms pull it down over winter. I don't dig.

What suffered were the onions, most of which didn't put much more weight on than the sets I put in. I thought that as they were following my peas and beans they wouldn't need any nitrogen fertilizer and the soil was nicely crumbled but firm, so what did they need? On the topic of this thread - should I have added my compost to the onion bed instead? I want to get this right for next year.