From

Location

Message

Date Posted

Connecticut, USA

I was reviewing the Martha Stewart piece last night and picked up on the amount of manure that the Wallace's used, 20 yards per plant.

Last year I used 5 yards for two plants. I am assuming that I could use more since they used 10 times the amount I did... but I was wondering what other people were doing as well.

John

2/25/2001 9:32:14 AM

Keep in mind he gives each plant 1000 sq ft. THis figures to be 6 to 7 inches in depth on the whole patch. Wow he must have some tiller!

Alex

2/25/2001 10:57:49 AM

derry n.h u.s.a.

Hi John:
Last yr in early spring (begginning of march)I put about 10,000 lbs of somewhat composted manure in my garden.My garden is about 1000 sq. ft'.Some times it's hard to find the real black manure that looks real old. the stuff i used was probley about 6 months old.Anyway in late july i noticed that quite a few leaf stalks or tubes were split open due to too much nitrogin and that marked the beggining of the end for those leafs. The tubes filled up with rain water collected by the massive leafs.although i dident have to fertilize much. The plants were plenty green all summer long.sometimes less is better.A lesson well learned by me. The leafs were also borderline purple.This year i'm getting my manure from the same cow farmer but only adding one truck load and spreading it thin.They say 7 to 10% humas or organtic matieral in the soil is great.Mine was 7% according to my soil report done by U.N.H. And very high in all the elements accually a little to high. so this yr. im going with a little manure and will add accordinly.I also tilled in two bales of straw last fall to add a little more organtic matieral.Hope this helps.John G....

2/25/2001 2:41:06 PM

walton n.y.

you should use well rotted manure otherwise you can run into problems with salts and amonia green manure actually uses nitrogen to decompose if you can get the organic material level over 13% you can have a ph level down to 5.5 without harming the plant plus it gives insects and diseasesthe chance to eat something else besides your plant and it helps the soil to retain water last year i only had 5 yards of manure on the patch this fall i added 10 yards more and planted a cover crop to try and hold my soil in place

2/25/2001 5:44:49 PM

Commack, NY

i talk to ron here and there....i know that he added all that manure in march, as opposed to the fall when most of us tend to add large amounts of organic. i added close to twenty yards of manure this year, that was so fresh.........dont even get me started on this :). anyway, my patch is approximatly 1000 sq feet. last year my N levels were ridiculous,and my OM level was 10.61%. my leaf stems grew to over 3' in height in a very very short time. it was pretty insane. but i didnt have a problem blowing them, or setting a pumpkin even. i think alot depends on your soil type and the seed itself. my soil is sandy, so although my N was high, by the end of the season, through leaching and uptake by the plant, my N was extremely low. i would think that if your soil had a tendancy to hold on to the nutrients, you might run into a problem with too much N.

scott

2/26/2001 4:52:07 PM

Long Island,New York

I give up.

2/26/2001 5:41:54 PM