[Muddylou]

I put fresh manure over all of my plot last winter (my first) and dug it in in the spring. One of the old boys on the plot told me I would have to "scrape it off" before I could grow anything.
Well, it may have been beginners luck, but I got loads of everything including carrots and parsnips. Any way I've done the same this year. The only problem  I've had is growing huge everything and a cabbage lasting us two weeks so having to give lots of produce away.  The only thing that wasn't successful was broad beans which the black fly got to.

Good to know! Didn't your Parsnips/Carrots badly fork? I had that problem this year on a bed that was manured a year ago.
This year I only plan to put in greedy feeders.

I'd say 10% of the carrots forked, my problem (being a newbie) was sowing too many to close together and not thinning. I planted quite a few rows, the later ones I sowed very thinly and had much better results, in the same manured soil as the earlier ones.

ps. I sowed into a drill of compost, then covered the seeds with a little more compost, but they grew into the manured soil.