Reply To: Ready to go!

[plantmark]

Charles, I enjoyed your talk last week which was useful to renew my determination, bearing in mind recent difficulties.

Dow Chemicals asked me to do a Bioassay with Broad Beans. So I sowed Broad Beans in a Sylva compost alongside the manure in 7 inch pots. The seeds germinated as expected with the Sylva Compost producing shoots with nice flat leaves and the manure sown seeds showing curling. In fact they showed the same result as the initial images I sent to them when they said that they did not consider that AP was present.

Now that I have undertaken their experiment and sent them images of the result they say that the damage may have been caused by a hormone herbicide of some sort.

Meanwhile, I found an alternative source of nice black manure with an appearance much better than the first batch and I was encouraged to know that the guy supplies it to the local authority for the wonderful flower bed displays on the roundabouts in Letchworth. So…..I steamed in and had a delivery of about 3 or 4 tons because I was keen to plant out my veg and flowers which were bursting out of pots in the greenhouse.

I replaced about 20% of the manure which I initially laid down which took me 6 hours to complete. Growth on Runner Beans, French Beans and Barlotti Beans is very poor, with spindly twisted growth and yellowing leaves and Broad Beans planted in the manure are growing with cupped leaves and black tips, so its pretty clear that I have another duff batch.

I have found another source, where they are methodically processing the manure to bag for sale in Garden Centres. The product looks nice and I am currently testing with Broad Beans, Tomatoes and Lettuce. I just bought 8 bags this time!

I have also been to our local Green Waste processing plant where they are producing a nice looking product. I am thinking that this may be my best option as it will be good to work with, unlike the manure which needs an awful lot of chopping to break it up, but I am concerned about using it having seen some of your trials in pots which show very poor growth from green waste when compared to other compost and manure.

I know that you use it, but how do your results compare with Green Waste compared to farm manures?