Carrot and Parsnip bed preparation

Last year i emptied a raised bed to a spades depth for carrots and parsnips. i then riddled the soil back in to remove all the stones. I understand that manure and carrots dont normally mix but would it be ok for me to put a good layer of manure in the bed before filling it with the riddled soil.

cheers Paul

There are 2 main causes of forking of parsnips and carrots, the main one is the root encountering an obstruction in the soil and having to divert round it, and is usually a stone but sometimes a lump of compost.

The second cause is when the root finds something irresistible just "out of reach" and grows towards it - this is usually a nutrient-rich lump of manure which of course is also likely to be temptingly moist as well.

I think if you bury your manure deep enough not to cause forking problems it will be too deep to be of much use to the crops, but don't starve your plants either if your soil is very poor.

DD says he never feeds his carrots but his soil is probably better than my sandy stuff - I add either Growmore or dried chicken poo a few weeks before sowing and fork it in well to make sure it's evenly mixed - after that they're on their own, although the parsnips usually get another top-dressing later in the summer. 

I am with Benandbill. Last year I used a metal pole and moved it round in a circle to create a cone shaped hole. I filled this with sand and compost and dropped in my parsnips sown in paper tubes. I got my some very good parsnips but some forked.

This year I am planning on doing the same thing but sowing the parsnips direct. The sand/compost mix should be a different colour to the rest and not have seeds in it. Hopefully there should be no confusion about anything that pops up from the different coloured soil so I will not be weeding out my own parsnips which happened a couple of years ago!

By sowing direct they should not fork because they hit the bottom of the paper tube - We will see.