Help Needed Please

[alanp1]

Hi all
I`m new to gardening my problem is.
got my garden ready before i started planting,put horse manure,chicken,pellets,fish blood and bone meal,plus granulare fertilizer
the trouble i have now is that i grew some potatoes ,they came to about 6ft high really good foilage on them when they flowered i waited till the tops died off then dug em up well about 14 plants and about 2lb of spuds off em, i was really dissapointed with them,
put beetroot in a good while ago now tall foilage again look really good but dug them up but they just havn`t swelled to any size just nothing there again,well now im so let down that nothing will grow ,there is something im doing wrong.
is it that the ground is to good? does it need lime or something
Any help will be most welcome to me
best wishes
alan

[andrewo]

It sounds like you have overfed the ground, you put alot into it, which is no bad thing but you have to work on a crop rotation system, more here:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile...p_rotation.asp
You created a soil that would just give you plenty of top growth at the expense of the actual crop. Now potatoes also need alot of water, so this could also result in a poor crop. As soon as the flowers appear, water like mad and this will cause the potatoes to swell. I would also get a cheap PH kit too (it beats the old way, which was to put it in your mouth and old gardeners could tell from the taste!) and get a gardening year book for veg or general and that should help you. Most importantly, don't worry, this is a learning process and we are all learning new things each day, such is the beauty of veg!

[Snadger]

Too much nitro! You've given the plants too much Nitrogen which promotes leaf growth at the expense of everything else.

Horse manure nitro, chicken pellets nitro (lots of). Fish blood and bone (mainly nitro),granular ballanced fertiliser (1/3 nitro)

Next year just use the well rotted muck with a light dressing of 7-7-7- granular (growmore)! That should be sufficient! You could water with a tomato feed once the flowers have set on the spuds to give them a bit potassium!

[NSB]

I found the same problem in the summer, I believe my problem is from watering them too much

[rustylady]

Too much fertiliser, you really don't need that much. With the amount of stuff you applied you will get lots of leaf growth, but things like beetroot and spuds will not swell their roots. Nitrogen is good for leaf crops like lettuce, cabbage etc. but even they don't need the amount you applied. Cut down a bit and see how you go. Good luck!!

[veg4681]

If the animal manure is so rich in nitrogen, then I can't see much reason why I have to plant brassica on a plot previously occupied by Legume vegetables (nitrogen soil fixer) as dictated by crop rotation...especially if you have access to lots of manure.

I don't like being strictly tied down to crop rotation because you don't always find the vegetables that you want to grow just because they belong to a certain vegetable family. Is that why the root and onion vegetables are appended towards the end of the crop rotation sequence as soil are exhausted by heavy feeders?

Yet when you start out on a new plot, when no crop rotation has even started, it's quite easy to forget about 'not overdoing' the soil for certain vegetable family. I know I would have overlooked too but I didn't grow root or onion from the beginning.

[cottage garden]

Yes..way too much nitrogen.....But plant your cabbages there and you will have a fabulous crop!

I would have loved to have seen six foot potato foliage...WOW

[Snadger]

If the animal manure is so rich in nitrogen, then I can't see much reason why I have to plant brassica on a plot previously occupied by Legume vegetables (nitrogen soil fixer) as dictated by crop rotation...especially if you have access to lots of manure.

Well rotted manure is more of a soil conditioner than a feed. If it's well rotted it hasn't got a particularily high Nitrogen content.

Fresh manure or part rotted manure, especially chicken muck has a high ammonia content because of the urine in it and can burn tender young roots
I must admit that leaving the roots of legumes in the soil so that the following crop can capatalise on the Nitro is a bit of a pain as it makes it hard to prepare the bed. I usually pull up the peas and beans and strip the fixated nitro granules from the roots before preparing the bed as usual. The leaving of the roots in is probably geared toward larger scales than we deal with and will enable the farmer to plough in the roots ready for his brassicas. I dare bet he would give a suplementary feed as well!

I like you, don't get hung up on the technicalities of crop rotation as it is based on giving the same total area to brassicas as legumes etc and everyone likes to make the best use of there land and grow what THEY like to eat! Common sense dictates, don't follow one crop with another from the same family but still grow what you enjoy eating and rotate as best you can!

[Two_Sheds]

Don't get too hung up on feeding the soil... I don't usually bother, maybe a little comfrey feed as and when I remember. I certainly don't use manure, I can't lift/shovel it !
My crops are perfectly fine, I'm having allotment dinners several times a week throughout the year.
I do crop rotate, with a four bed rotation on my allotment...it works fine, its not overly complicated. There's a little overlap because I like LOTS of beans, and they tend to meander into other beds.

[veg4681]

I must admit that leaving the roots of legumes in the soil so that the following crop can capatalise on the Nitro is a bit of a pain as it makes it hard to prepare the bed. I usually pull up the peas and beans and strip the fixated nitro granules from the roots before preparing the bed as usual. The leaving of the roots in is probably geared toward larger scales than we deal with and will enable the farmer to plough in the roots ready for his brassicas. I dare bet he would give a suplementary feed as well!

Didn't know you're supposed to leave the Legume roots in (this is 'no can do' for me) but like you say, you can still strip up the roots and sprinkle the nitro granules into the soil...