Kitchen Garden Forum

I have made half of my allotment into 20 raised beds,4ft x16ft,showing my age now, no metres.As I am getting on I thought it would make things easier. Talking to my Norfolk old boys I said all I needed to do was manure each year. they say you can manure to much and poison the soil,I have an abundance of cow and horse manure.I hardly ever lime as my soil is always 6/7Ph reading. Is the Norfolk advice from their great grandads.

CC
they say you can manure to much and poison the soil,

I should think this only applies if you are keeping livestock on the ground, there is something they say when paddocks have been used for many years is that the ground is horse sick this is because there is a built up of all the nasties in the ground, this is why you see people picking the muck up out of the field, but as for manure for the allotment there should not be any problem and you can give some beds a rest when you want to grow carrots or parsnips.

I wouldn't have thought you could 'poison the soil', but when I put my fruit trees in a few years ago I was very liberal with the manure and they grew 'soft' and were covered in aphids in their first year. Since then I've been more moderate with the manure and I've had no further problems.
So I suppose you could make the growing medium too rich in nitrogen for healthy plant growth and experience such problems as leaf at the expense of fruit or tubers (such as potatoes). Plants may also be more susceptible to pest attack as I mentioned above.
You also might find your ground a little more slug prone if it's very rich and moist.
Is the manure very well rotted?

Good morning my old Cockneycarrot, what can be a big mistake is if you put fresh cow manure that has just been dug out of the yards into a heavy soil.
This will make it very cold and sour, especially if one has double dug the ground and incorporated the manure through all the layers of soil.
Guess who did that many years ago.

But if it's well rotted there should not be a problem, if you ever do notice that things are not growing quite as they should, you can always leave the manure off for a couple of seasons.

it might be a good idea to leave a small area unmanured for root crops which don't thrive in freshly manured soil. However, as long as the manure is really old and rotted I'm sure there won't be a problem. You may end up with more leafy growth initially on plants like tomatoes, potatoes etc. but the yield will probably increase proportionately too. After all, you are only returning a natural product to the soil. It might suffer some short term indigestion but in my experience most vegetables thrive on the stuff.

Cockneycarrot I have also 'invested' in taking the time to create beds on my lottie and as part of my rotation only add manure to the pots and legumes. I add two barrow loads per 10ft by 4ft bed of well rotted muck. Like others I found using muck too freely in the early years produced soft growth and/or lots of stalk but ordinary pots.