[weedkillerMember]

I added 6″ of welll rotted manure to a bed of couch grass and planning to plant strawberries because as I understood that 6″ should kill the couch grass eventually. Or have I misunderstood things??? Poolfield has your couch grass come through your 6″ of muck? This thing about weed is worrying.

[weedkillerMember]

Thanks Charles. Can you recommend a website where I can buy potatoe tublers from please(main crop)?

[weedkillerMember]

Thanks Sahira and Charles, I did read some thing about that issue somewhere on the website. I did think of asking the supplier of where he is getting his manure from, but how can I be sure he is telling the truth! Unfortunately we live in a world of money making even if it means lying. Or maybe he does not even know if the farm on which the horses were fed from grass sprayed with that stuff. If I got it, tested it and found it did have those chemicals, what am I going to do with 2 tonnes of it!

[weedkillerMember]

Thanks. I think I will plant garlic then.

[weedkillerMember]

Your advice is greatly appreciated. As a new gardner it is easy to misunderatsnd anything.

I have read a fair amount of your website and I am planning to follow the approaches I have read to organic gardening. I am now in the process of ordering a couple of tonnes of more rotted manure to make sure the allotment is 4 to 6 inches of it covered.

Thanks once again.

[weedkillerMember]

I found the answer to my previous post in the following link:

http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/content/october-2012

I am so happy, now I feel I can burry my weeds under inches of manure happily and not worry about nutrients lost due to rain. This also means that my worry about my allotment being full of weeds (and how on earth I am going to de-weed it – hence the name weedkiller!)is hopefully over. I am not going to de-weed anything, I am just going to pile my manure on it and starv it to death (well that is the plan now anyway).

[weedkillerMember]

Thank you for the reply.

The soft fruit bushes I have planted were bare rooted ones and I have only planted them a few days ago, so the ground round them looks empty and it just seems to be a waste. If I plant the stratwberries there, this year I suppose will give me a good yield but next year not so much, righ? Or it is better just to plant them on a sepearte bed of their own? Is there anything else I can grow under my soft fruit trees?

[weedkillerMember]

Thank you very much Charles. I now have more queries.

1) I was going to spread the manure but one of the experienced allotmenteers told me if I spread the manure now, all the nutrients will be washed down due to the rain. Does that mean then that by the time spring comes I will not have much nutrients in the soil? Also I have been reading and watching youtube videos on vegetable growing and now a bit confused, some say that not all vegetables like manure. Does that mean when it is fully rotten down it is no longer classified as manure, ie it is soil then? More light shedding on this matter is greatly appreciated.

2) From your previous post, I understand that I should plant vegetables that tollerate the conditions of the soil as it is now (with leaf mulch and manure) until it becomes fine tilth for those vegetables that like fine tilth. Am I right in understanding it like that?

Thank you once again.

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