Hi everyone, I've had a delivery of cow manure which is sitting outside in a heap waiting to be spread. Do I need to cover the pile while it sits ? Theres been heavy rain for the past few days and I've noticed the pile seems to have shrunk. It's become very difficult to shift being so wet but besides this I was wondering whether there's any other reason to cover the heap while it sits ?
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I have no proof, just what fellow allotmenters have told me....
I am sometimes told that rain can ‘wash the nutrients out’, but in my view that’s not necessarily a reason to worry, particularly if you plan to grow stuff in the soil underneath at some point. I would also comment that I grew courgettes, squash and cucumbers this year in a pile of well rotted manure which had been left in the rain all winter. They grew brilliantly- but having never tried growing them in a muck heap which has been protected from rain, I do not know if they might have done even better. We certainly couldn’t have eaten any more!
As for keeping the rain off, I agree a dry heap is much easier on your back. Covering to let it dry out a bit before you need to shift it seems sensible to me, but you could also just wait until the weather improves!
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Depends where it has been dumped, if it is on an area where the run off can enter a drain or stream cover it till the rain is off then get it onto the garden as soon as possible, if it is sitting in the garden with no potential of contaminating streams or drains, spread it at your leisureit may be a struggle to reach the top, but once your over the hill your problems start.
Member of the Nutters Club but I think I am just there to make up the numbers
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The thing with going by what farmers do is that they very often are working on a different scale - a huge heap of manure won't get that wet because of the ratio between the surface area and volume, also farmers usually have machines to move stuff round, so if it weighs 30% more it makes v little difference to them.
I read a lot of gardening books, and very often the advice given would puzzle me. Then when I thought it over it seemed that writers had based what they did on the days when a decent veg garden was about 2 acres with a staff of 5 or 6 people to work it ie they were written from the perspective of an old head gardener - hence things like double-digging and crop rotation. That's not to say that these old practices are bad - they aren't, they worked well given the conditions they were developed for, but most people aren't able to "rotate" their cabbage bed 400 yards to another place in their garden yearly and so leave some pests behind that way - what will work well on one scale doesn't translate down to the pocket handkerchief size plots most people have.
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Originally posted by nickdub View PostThe thing with going by what farmers do is that they very often are working on a different scale - a huge heap of manure won't get that wet because of the ratio between the surface area and volume, also farmers usually have machines to move stuff round, so if it weighs 30% more it makes v little difference to them.
I read a lot of gardening books, and very often the advice given would puzzle me. Then when I thought it over it seemed that writers had based what they did on the days when a decent veg garden was about 2 acres with a staff of 5 or 6 people to work it ie they were written from the perspective of an old head gardener - hence things like double-digging and crop rotation. That's not to say that these old practices are bad - they aren't, they worked well given the conditions they were developed for, but most people aren't able to "rotate" their cabbage bed 400 yards to another place in their garden yearly and so leave some pests behind that way - what will work well on one scale doesn't translate down to the pocket handkerchief size plots most people have.
I also read a lot of gardening books and I may not agree with a lot of what is written in them but it is easier if up to date books are used as reference .
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Today I have learnt that I will always cover horse muck or my Effie pup will eat it all. Yum!
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Originally posted by veggiechicken View PostPlease, what's a mucking grape?
It sounds like a rude name for some of the Grapes on the Forum!!
https://www.fanevalleystores.com/pro...t-handle-graip
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