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You can plant closer for sure, though if too close the onions will be smaller – try some different spacings to see. Depth wise, if the compost is recently spread and still fluffy, the sets want to be a half inch or so deeper so their tops are invisible, also this may help birds NOT to see them and pull them out. As the compost is taken in, other soil comes up, mainly as wormcasts, so the planting level remains similar.
I have created a new forum topic under vegetables, with my answer: you may not agree and I am keen to hear other opinions because at the moment people seem to assume that heritage varieties are better. I assume the opposite because I feel they are heritage for a reason…. but that is not to say they don’t have other qualities.
Sorry to maybe sound pedantic but manure is a mixture of animal poo and the litter they have bedded on. Putting all that in a heap results in the litter being helped to rot by nutrients in the poo and as they meld together a well rotted manure is created. Fresh manure is poo and fresh litter: the problem with too much fresh litter is that it needs nutrients to help it break down, and will use some of your soil’s nutrients for this. The nutrients are not lost, just borrowed and out of use for a while. Using fresh poo without any litter, such as you describe above, is probably ok: I would put it at the bottom of a bed rather than on the surface, or small amounts can be added to compost heaps.
Horse manure is superb but is best applied when reasonably well rotted i.e. it is dark brown with not too many bits of yellow straw or wood shavings. Usually it reaches this point after at least six months in a heap. Wood shavings take longer to rot than straw but are helped to rot by all the nitrogen in hen droppings: unless you have a huge flock, I would add the chicken coop contents to your compost heaps, which should become bigger once your allotment plot is cropping.
Regarding weed seeds, some discipline is needed when making compost heaps, which rarely heat enough to kill all the seeds, or even half of them. So you need to put less in. My experience is of weeding when weeds are small, before they seed, so my compost is clean. Plants laden with viable seeds are better burnt, sorry not ecological, in my case that amounts to a few foxglove stems, mostly seeding flowers from the herbaceous beds. However I would still use your weedy compost, especially if it is initially under a covering mulch, then be prepared to hoe it later when any seeds have enough daylight to germinate – it may be less than you imagine, but you must keep on top of them.
Your plan will work as long as there is a thick enough mulch for long enough to stifle any re-growth of whatever roots are in the pasture. Annual grasses are the quickest to die off whereas dandelions and couch grass can require up to six months of darkness to starve their roots of stored nutrients. You may need a second application of paper or cardboard in about three months time.
Once the pasture plants are mostly dead, your vegetable plants or seeds (plants are easiest in the first year when slugs – residual population from the pasture – are more numerous) will grow happily, first in the compost and then rooting into the soil below, which although undug will still have a lovely structure, left behind by the dead pasture-plant roots and lots of worm channels too. All that structure is broken by digging or rotovating, which imposes a temporary mechanical structure instead.
Mulching and not digging saves a lot of work and a lot of new weeds but does restrict the first year’s cropping a little – spring salads and carrots are almost impossible but leeks, potatoes, autumn beetroot and brassicas, courgettes and squashes are possible. Then you will reap lots of advantages in the second year because uncultivated soil grows so many less annual weeds. Good luck.
I can’t help with advice on this seeder. For small seeds such as carrots I find it best to keep my finest compost for where they are to be sown, spread not too thick (an inch at most on the surface). Forking has never been a problem. The advice on not manuring ground for root crops assumes that you are digging it in – it is the incorporated manure or compost which leads to fangs and forks.
I have seen this on my dig / no dig experiment where surface composted parsnips are all straight, compared to those growing in a dug bed with compost dug in, which often fork.
All I can say is that I often spread manure on frozen soil because it is a great time to be pushing a wheelbarrow, on hard soil rather than in the mud, and it all thaws out alright when temperatures rise. Also the manure is quickly frozen which helps to break open any lumps.
Hi seedpod, you are doing well to have plenty of well rotted manure and putting about a couple of inches on top of the soil would be about right, since you have already added quite a lot. I reckon that once soil fertility has been improved by a large initial dressing – which can be applied on the surface – the subsequent annual dose of one to two inches on top is about right to maintain health and soil life. I find that my clay soil resists drought much better from having the organic matter on top, making a softer and more crumbly surface.
Re acidity (see the lime question too) I would be surprised if the manure lowers your pH significantly and 6.5 is certainly good for vegetable growing.
Hi John
Use of lime is rarely necessary for vegetables unless you are on really acid soil, in which case you can grow wonderful blueberries! Slightly acid soil means less scab on potatoes too. Around here the soil is based on limestone so tends to be alkaline (up to pH 8.5, still growing great vegetables), and anywhere on limestone or chalk should never need lime. If your pH is below 6 you may need to apply some – ask your neighbours if they use lime – otherwise I would not worry.
I wonder…probably only if they are small, young weeds. Unless the compost was thick and even enough to cover all weed leaves, some will re-grow, especially around the edges of beds. In your situation the polythene was a good idea. Or you could have put down some cardboard (after removing tape, staples etc) and covered that with the compost. Cardboard is liked by worms, is good soil food, allows rain through and exists for long enough to kill most annual weeds. And unlike polythene it does not need removing.
Yes Richard do it asap and spread the compost. I would normally recommend spreading manure or compost before covering ground with plastic, so worms can then be busy and break it down while the ground is covered, creating a better tilth – always as long as the soil is moist at the time when it is covered.
More generally, I think that once soil is clean of weeds (apart from occasional annuals) there is no advantage to covering with polythene, instead put on a 2" mulch of compost/manure in autumn. Pull any weeds that grow over winter, knock the lumps out with a rake or fork in any drier winter weather (I was doing that today), and by March you will be ready to sow and plant.
Hi Ben, the cold weather certainly makes for dramatically different conditions to previous winters. Worms are less busy near the soil surface – I think quite a few are hibernating. On the other hand, the frost is getting into all lumps of manure and compost so that when it thaws out, they will crumble apart when knocked with a rake. In this way, the manure or compost becomes a lovely dark, crumbly topsoil for planting into, and worms will come up for it in spring as plants are rooting into it.
I have just finished spreading cow manure on a bed where parsnips had to be levered out because they had grown so long in the undug clay. This levering loosened the soil more than I like for all vegetables except potatoes, which do grow well in artificially loosened soil. So I shall be planting potatoes into this soil, under the manure which acts as a fertile mulch on top and can be used to earth up (I should say ‘manure up’) the potato plants as they grow next spring.
Then after harvesting the potatoes (first and second earlies) in late June and July, I shall rake level all the remaining surface manure on top of the bed, before planting autumn salads such as endives, radicchios and oriental leaves, which thrive in the rich soil which usually, by then, has seen most of the manure taken in by worms during spring and summer.
Re the polythene, it may do some good if you have weeds to kill but otherwise I see little benefit, and it sometimes helps slugs to breed.
In other words, I never incorporate manure or compost. Vegetable plants love to root through them on the surface, and into the undisturbed but well structured soil underneath. Last year my potatoes were wonderful, grown as described above, and easier to harvest because of the tubers being closer to surface than normal (less sticky clay to deal with), as long as one makes sure to push compost around their stems in May and June to stop any tubers going green.
I would not recommend it as large bushes and trees take so long to settle in to a new position, having lost a relatively high proportion of their roots, perhaps also because they are older and less vigorous.
I have enjoyed best results from planting small bushes as nothing much more than single stem twigs. Fruit trees as well are most successful when planted as one year old maidens, which are cheaper to buy and easier to plant.
The paper would keep some frost off but any improvement in flavour sounds doubtful to me unless it was from blanching of endive and chicory leaves to reduce their bitterness. The paper could also harbour slugs.