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zamoey

By Zamoey

West Sussex, United Kingdom Gb

Hi, I have dug up some healthy shrubs and what to grow vegetables there instead, the soil looks great, do I need to add anything before I plant veggies in the spring, I don't really want to use any manure because the dogs will eat it...yuk




Answers

 

If the dogs want to eat it, Zamoey, I don't think your manure is well-rotted enough, and would possibly damage and scorch your vegetables! I generally leave mine a year before using anywhere in the garden.
A warm welcome to GoY, by the way. There'll be someone along in a minute, I am sure, to tell you what best to add to your new vegetable patch. At the moment, well dug over is a very good start.

27 Jan, 2012

 

If you have just removed a lot of shrubs from the area of ground although the soil may 'look' good it is likely to be short of nutriments. Good well rotted manure, compost or soil improver needs to be dug in to the bed, though not where you will grow carrots or parsnips. I would advise keeping your dogs off the area you plan on growing food in any case as they will pollute the soil with the faeces.

27 Jan, 2012

 

Try lasagne gardening. You dig a trench, add kitchen scraps, paper, cardboard any other greens and browns in layers. If you do it now you may be able to grow beans and legumes in spring. As Moon Growe has said, you need to add nutrients back into the soil for veg to grow well.

27 Jan, 2012

 

thank you all, a great help.

27 Jan, 2012

 

I honestly think that lasagne gardening only works if you dig the trenches in autumn. Two months from now Zamoey will be wanting to sow seed and the stuff in the trenches may not have broken down properly, particularly if a lot of cardboard is added. On and don't add anything with coloured ink on it, the inks are toxic.

27 Jan, 2012

 

Beans especially love the half-rotted garden/kitchen waste trench below them! I generally do my bean trench in March, 2ft deep with 12" of kitchen waste/manure/compost at the base and 18" of soil backfilled into a mound on top ... the extra 6" rots down to level, and by May, I plant the bean seeds directly out. I have more runner and climbing beans than we can eat ... ever! You need a strong frame for them. As for other veggies, I start my carrots early, in a tub 18" off the ground, to avoid carrot fly; lettuces need loads of nitrogen from any source, but shallowly placed for their shallow roots. I tend now to grow mixed lettuces in troughs, cutting what I need. Cutting just above soil height, rather than pulling them out, gives me three crops from the same plant. Radish, spring onion, and baby leeks need less nitrogen and more minerals, so I feed these with a low nitrogen feed available in ericaceous feeds for rhododendrums, etc, but specialist feeds are also available.

27 Jan, 2012

 

Like we have agreed to before - each to their own Avkq...

Still not something I would recommend, the trenches are still decomposing and therefore using nitrogen to do so.

Whatever floats your boat!

27 Jan, 2012

How do I say thanks?

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