Advice needed please

[Lizzy]

I have taken on an extra strip of land (11' x 30') at my allotments. I would like to grow onions and shallots, I know it is too late to manure but can I use chicken pellets now when I turn it over? I am not sure if this will be too strong.
Any advice would be appreciated.

[snake the squadie]

dont know if i am doing it right but i always put onions and shalloots in freshly dug ground with nothing added as they are easy to grow and i have never had any problems

[Lizzy]

Will try that, thanks. I know you are supposed to manure in the Autumn, but I was worried as this strip of land was'nt.

[snake the squadie]

i know you are supposed to buti am to busy manureing every thing else and what ever else needs doing i just plant my onion sets straight in

[muckdiva]

Hi Lizzy
I always put my onions in a bed that has not been too recently manured, they should be perfectly fine if you just plant them in ordinary soil. I suppose you could always sprinkle on some organic fertilizer if you wanted to.

[bluemoon]

These chicken manure pellets are usually used as a dry fertilizer rather than a true manure - more like growmore granules - it's perfectly ok to plant something and then scatter a handful around, or use them as a 'top-up' later in the season when nutrients are exhausted. I wouldn't bother with anything for onions though as they usually do well without any additional fertilizer and, as these pellets can be quite expensive, I'd save them for those things which need them. When we first took on our allotment we obviously had no compost ready and no rotted manure so we exclusively used these pellets sparingly for the first year or so and everything did well.

Also, one of the reasons for adding manure is to help the soil's structure and, to be honest, I can't see these pellets being much use in that area.

[NOG]

I use Blood Fish and Bone scatter it on the soil when you plant and again when they are growing.