Top Tips
Onions
One good indicator that your onions are ready is when the foliage topples over. Dig the bulbs and store them in a dry place to cur...
| Salad and Herbs
For continuous production of salad plants you should sow seeds on a fortnightly basis throughout the spring and summer. Choosing s...
| Dealing with slugs
If you have any problem with slugs in your garden, choose a night when you don't expect rain, take a pie plate or other deep plate...
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Green Manure
(sheet composting)These plants are grown to nourish and protect the
soil rather than in their own right. Once grown they are dug back into the
soil, or put on the
compost heap. Think of them as a natural blanket/nutrient cover for your
soil. In addition to stopping nutrients washing away, and weeds getting a foothold, some fix nitrogen and others have deep
roots which break up the
soil and bring up nutrients which will be fed back in to the surface when you cut the crop down.
Some fall into various
crop rotation groups, so try to make sure you don’t mess up this cycle. For instance, mustard grows really quickly, so can cover an area for a short or long time, but it is susceptible to club root, so treat it as a
brassica.
This means you should use it after your main
brassica crop, so if there’s a problem the green
manure will show it up. (See more detail under specific fruit and veg type pages).
Manure
(Organic)Organic matter, usually from cattle, or horses (in other words, vegetarians). Full of nutrients for your
soil and the plants that grow in it. You can buy it from farms, garden centres, and horse keepers, but look for an
organic certification e.g. that from the
Soil Association.
You only need a wheelbarrow full per 10sq metres (or two barrow fulls of well rotted
compost) to meet the nutritional requirements for good crop growth. In agriculture these quantities are very specific so that the farmer does not waste money on too much
manure, and nutrients do not get washed off the
soil and into the water system.
On your plot you can be far more rough-and-ready. The plot that will have potatoes, or ‘other’ needs to be heavily manured, the plot taking the
roots just needs
compost, not fresh
manure, the
brassica plot loves
manure but wants firm
soil, so let it settle before planting, and the
legumes love a rich deep heavily manured/composted
soil.
Your fruit bushes and trees could do with some in spring, and roses like a good
soil dressing of
manure in spring. If you have some left over, spread it over the
soil’s surface.
Sheet Composting
(green manure)A method of spreading undecomposed
organic materials over the
soil's surface, then working them into the
soil to decompose, rather than piling them and spreading the resulting
compost. (see also Green
Manure)