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Wow!
Still so beautiful. You should be very proud.
JanYou seem to be very well read Tris. Great stuff.
JanFor anyone maybe growing from seed or having an excess of plants I quite like Bob Flowerdew’s previous suggestion. He said he can’t wait 3 years to start cropping so he plants his plants much closer than you would think. The first year he crops everything off each alternate plant and leaves the others untouched. This causes the plant to die so you have wider spacing. Year 2 he does the same again with the same result. This leaves the remaining plants at the correct spacing to start cropping properly in year three. I like the idea, but I haven’t tried it.
Good luck anyway
JanWhere are you based, Jo?
If you got your seeds from a supermarket squash it’s likely the whole field/tunnel were growing butternut squash so cross-pollinated amongst themselves to produce seeds in your squash that came ‘true’. In a garden setting they are not usually that isolated from other varieties and the squash family will quite happily cross-pollinate amongst themselves to produce seeds of variable hybrid characteristics. So although you have butternut squash fruits now, if you were to sow the seed from them and had different squash growing nearby, you may not get butternut squash from these seeds next year. Could be fun trying though!
(Also, any seed labelled as F1 is a specific cross between two different parents and any seed saved from F1 varieties is unlikely to come ‘true’.)
Hope this isn’t too confusing. Haven’t got much time.
JanHi Michal,
You don’t need the top soil (unless you want really high beds) as it would just ‘dilute’ your compost.
Horse manure and/or compost are both fine as long as they’re well rotted, otherwise you’re just encouraging slugs. You probably need to give your horse manure a test for a nasty chemical called aminopyralid (which is becoming more prevalent again) before you use it. It’s sprayed on fields to reduce ragwort etc poisonous to horses, but the residues can end up in manure and cause distortion in susceptible veg. You can use the search facility on this page to look the test up, or maybe someone will send you a link.
You can sow your beans direct in the compost if you wish, no need to wait, but if you have a mouse problem you may be better off sowing them under cover and then transplanting. As a thought you could use some beans to test for aminopyralid at the same time and if they’re ok transplant those too.
I’ve not tried seaweed so I’ll leave that to others, but I imagine you would add it to your compost heap to rot down otherwise you’re at risk of slugs again as a mulch.
I wish you the very best with your new veg patch.
JanHi Busybee, how’s the hotbin going? I have usually found it quite tricky in the past to get the right mix of ingredients without it all descending into a smelly mess. I think the purpose of the large quantity of paper added is to absorb excess water as it’s produced as well as being a ‘brown’, that’s why you’re told to add more if the compost becomes anaerobic. I have found it to be hugely beneficial this time to use a compost aerator of a corkscrew design and to use it on a fairy regular basis. My compost is chugging along at 60 C at the moment. I hope you manage to find suitable substitutes. All the best
JanNot had a lot of experience at making it but I believe leaf decomposition for leaf mould is mainly fungal and needs to be damp. If your leaves were damp when you collected them I would think it would be ok (but stand to be corrected by experts on here). If they were dry then it could take a very long time unless you could water them. Wish you the best
Jan