[makarim]

  Hello Everyone

I am a newbie in the world of allotment and got my new plot about three weeks ago.  It is quite big and heavily overgrown so we spent the last three Sundays clearing it up of rubbish, weeds, broken glass and the rest. I have never seen grass roots so long and surprised at how long some weed roots took to take out.  Some of these roots were like a foot long.

Anyways back to the question and some well needed advice.

Now that the plot is cleared we have separated it into four sections and dug each section up.  As it is too late to grown anything we received a delivery of manure.  I am not sure what kind of manure it is but it was full of straws with golf ball size brown stuffs over them which i believe is the manure.

Now my questions are

1 - Should I spread the manure over the sections of the plot which we dug up.  We plan to leave this over the winter until spring when we will grow vegetables.  Is this a good idea?

2 - Can we use the straw and manure (this is NOT rotted) and use as mulch over soft fruit plants and vegetables in the summer. 

3 - I have seen other plot holders just spread the straw and manure on the base of their plants.  Should I be doing this.  For example when I grown runner beans in the summer can I place the straw and manure near the roots

Many thanks for all your help

[Yorkie]

Welcome to the site 

Yes to all 3 questions, with the provisos that:

If the manure still smells 'fresh', I don't think it will rot down enough over the winter so I might consider storing it for the following autumn.  But others may disagree.

Q1 - don't spread it where you plan to grow carrots or parsnips;

Q3 - you could do so, particularly the beans and peas, but I probably wouldn't do it for all plants.  Rasberries would love it.

[noshed]

If you have a lot of it, the strawiest is quite good for making temporary paths between beds. It keeps the weeds down and you can dig it all in next autumn if you want to re-jig your beds.