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manure

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 6:50 am
by gunners71uk
ok i have made four beds for me marrow cues etc.i dug out about a ft deep hole and filled it with manure its about 3-4 months old and still a bit strawy. i have stuck top soi on top i will not be using it for at least 3 weeks.i was told your not suppose to use fresh maure well its 3-4 months old and will be in the wet ground for 3 weeks i was going to make a mound with a bit of compost on it too, will this be ok now i hope so.
my friend has put his marrow plants in all ready a bit early up north here .
anyway i bet the worms are in that pooh as we speak lol.

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 9:32 am
by alcina
You undoubtedly imported loads of worms in the poo too! I know I did! Hundreds of the luvvies! They did all the work of breaking up the soil for me. Marvellous little workers.

Alcina

Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 8:17 pm
by oddballdave
The best marrows I ever grew were from a plant which had been dropped, ignored and became surplus to requirements. So the whole thing got thrown on top of the manure heap, along with a huge pile of grass clippings.

Once the roots reach the manure, I would expect the things to suddenly shoot away. Make sure you use a high flower fertiliser to offset the nitrogen in the manure.

YMMV

Dave

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 6:04 am
by gunners71uk
cheers dave iwas going to use tomorite tomo feed once the first fruits form is that ok ?

Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:40 pm
by oddballdave
gunners71uk wrote:cheers dave iwas going to use tomorite tomo feed once the first fruits form is that ok ?
Sorry for delay in getting back here.

Nope!
Tomato feed is high potash/potassium. P and K
This is a FLOWER fertiliser.

The fruits form from the flowers.

So more flowers = more fruits.
You want to fertilise BEFORE the fruits start to form.

Although if you do fertilise after then you should get a second flush of flowers... and a third... fourth etc!!!!!

HTH

Dave
PS Comfrey is an 'organic' 'home made' high potash fertiliser.

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:23 pm
by ina
With all that muck you'll probably have more than enough flowers/fruit on it anyway, without extra fertiliser... I always grow mine on the old compost heap (last years heap turned over, with some manure mixed in). Admittedly, last year I wasn't terribly successfull, but it seemed to be a bad year for courgette; the year before I didn't know what to do with all the stuff from two plants!