compost advice needed please

[suzan]

Hi, last year was my first year of growing veggies and apart from green beans i grew everything in buckets and grow bags.
The question is do i need new to buy new compost this year or can i use last years.

[Aberdeenplotter]

we are always advised that it is probably best to, to avoid any build up of disease but a couple of years use should be ok. You may need to add some fertiliser as it will all have been used up with last years plants

[suzan]

Thank you, i will fertilise all the compost, can i grow the same veg in the same bags as last year?

[Two_Sheds]

Yes, you can use the same bags. It'd get mighty expensive if you bought new stuff every year.

I reuse all the compost from year to year, just refreshing it with BFB (blood, fish & bone) and picking out the biggest clumps of old roots.


Of course, like AP says, you need to be careful of soil-borne diseases and pests, esp. things like slug eggs, vine weevil larvae.

[Potstubsdustbins]

I honestly have now idea how old some of my compost is. Every most of it is overwintered in plastic dustbins, brought out riddled, enriched with NPK neutral fertilizer and reused.

As above only if I have had a problem with pests etc does it get discarded, although I will admit to buying some each year for seed cutting.

Colin

[Bigmallly]

can i grow the same veg in the same bags as last year?

Sorry suzan, I am a little confused. Does crop rotation not apply to container growing? I don't use them so really it is a genuine question.

[Potstubsdustbins]

BM if you mean the containers themselves then no not usually as they are cleaned every year just like your plant pots.

As to the compost then yes to a limited extent. Crop rotation as you are aware was devised to avoid the build up of nasties in the soil and given enough time this could happen to compost.

The only nod I can and do make to crop rotation is to try and use different compost for my spuds and toms each year and to date this seems to be enough of an effort to keep things growing correctly.

The other advantage we have of course is that if we get something nasty in a container we can bung the lot in the garedn waste bin and start fresh, not really an option on the plot.

Colin

[out in the cold]

Not so sure about the crop rotation thing after watching Monty Don the other night BM.

Dunno if you saw it, but he was in a place in France where they had grown onions in the same soil for over 120 years. They were regarded by everyone as "the best onions in France"

[Bigmallly]

Colin - I understand where you are coming from, I just wasn't sure if I was reading suzan's question correctly.
"can I grow the same veg in the same bags as last year?"
I take that as growing the same veg as the previous year in the same compost as the previous year.
Maybe she can clarify.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Having read the two posts again I think I see what you mean.

I took it as the first post was about the actual compost and the second about the containers.

Colin

[Aberdeenplotter]

The one certain thing about rotation is that it does help reduce the possibility of disease. White onion rot is an awful disease and said to be difficult to eradicate(I honestly doubt if it is possible) and it is a bit like dicing with death to grow onions on the same piece of ground for years on end. Despite that, I grow my exhibition onions in the same ground in my tunnel every year but I replaced soil in there after having whiterot and I expect to have to replace it in the future. What I have found with whiterot is that it seems to be temperature sensitive. Onions grow fine till it starts to get colder towards the end of the season and then succumb. It may be that that place in France doesn't have the same fluctuations in temperature.

[out in the cold]

It may be that that place in France doesn't have the same fluctuations in temperature.

I hadn't actually considered temperature variation to be a factor in promoting or eradicating disease.

(Then again, my overall gardening knowledge about a year ago would have struggled to fill a postage stamp)

[redser]

I think the onions worked well there because of that magical mystical thing called 'terroir'.

[Aberdeenplotter]

I hadn't actually considered temperature variation to be a factor in promoting or eradicating disease.

(Then again, my overall gardening knowledge about a year ago would have struggled to fill a postage stamp)

At one point, I did quite a lot of research about onion diseases and white rot in particular. There are many articles on the subject on the net.