I’ve been neglecting the poor allotment the past year or so due to being so busy with both my work and personal life so I thought it was about time that I gave something back to it. The tulip trough and the archway have been suffering and last year was one of the worst. The munchkin pumpkins and borlotto beans never grew up the old hazel arch and the tulip display was terrible with only a few blooms appearing. Therefore I treated myself and the allotment to a bag of 6X Natural Fertiliser which I picked up at a local garden centre. I’ve heard great reviews about this stuff and thought it would be the perfect way to add all those much needed nutrients back into the soil.
6X Natural Fertiliser is a 100% natural organic fertiliser with a balanced pH of 6.8. It’s environmentally friendly, contains no peat or chemicals and is oven heated at over 250°C to provide a sterilised, weed and pathogen free natural organic fertiliser. 6X Natural Fertiliserhas been produced in the U.K. for over 40 years and is a fully tried, tested and trusted product. Since 6X Natural Fertiliser is six times richer than farmyard manure, it provides balanced nutrition for shrubs, flower beds, vegetables and lawns and is extraordinarily economical - one 15Kg sack of fibrous 6X Natural Fertiliser is sufficient to cover 180sq metres at lawn rate. For greater lawn areas and paddocks etc., it is also available in pelleted form for use in spreaders.
You see I added the shop brought compost into the trough three years ago and it’s starting to lack all the goodness which tulips love. The poor archway also never gets rotated as I grow the same thing on it every year so all the nutrients have slowly been disappearing over the years. After I had weeded both areas I spread a layer of the fertiliser on top of the soil and waited for the rain that was forecast to do it’s thing. I also added a couple of handfuls to the base of my roses and my fruit bushes as well as along the row of raspberry canes. Now all I need to do is wait and cross my fingers, oh and build a new metal archway too!
5 thoughts on “Adding Something Back…”
Now we sit back and wait. You do all the tending, of course, while we cheer you on from the sidelines… in our chairs. Go, Katie!
It’s all go here in England and now it’s March already, I don’t know where the time flies! Thanks for the cheer
Hi
I like to use a 5 gallon bucket of old cow manure for every 10 square feet and every thing loves it. I use a bit more on my corn along with dried chicken poop.
On your nettle tea bucket, it helps to add some dock leaves and dandelion leaves because they come from deep taproot plants they have a nice mix of trace minerals. I use alfalfa tea on my transplants because it contains a root growth hormone that help the little plants heal damaged roots and get growing quicker
I gather the muck that comes out when farm drainage ditchs are cleaned out, it is a nice black earth that I use on my onions and celery where it helps hold moisture between waterings.
Did Doris do much damage at your plot, I saw some vids from Sean Camerons site that it messed things around there a bit.
Thank you so much for all the hints and tips Douglas, it’s so helpful and I am so excited! What do you think about sheep manure? There’s lots of it on my boyfriends farm but I never hear of people using it on gardens. No damage on our allotments at all, we were all rather lucky here
Hi
I think the sheep manure would be great on your garden.
I have spent 60 years on a family farm and we have raised almost every kind of farm animal and bird and have got to use their manure.
For a garden like yours my top picks would be 1 rabbit, 2 goat and 3 sheep. They all make a dry compact manure, rabbit and goat manure is already in nice little balls and is easy to spread around special plants. Sheep manure is close, not quite the pellets of goats and rabbits but dry enough to pick up with out a mess. All of these do not have the oder problems a lot of manures have.
Cow manure is a favorite of mine but this is cow manure and urine mixed with wood shaving and chopped swamp hay and composted in a dry place till it is nice and mellow. I checked out farmtv and cow manure over there is the same as here, a liquid that is not some thing to spread on your garden. You would be run off your allotment if you started bringing in buckets of that.
Horse manure used to be a great manure but here in the states it has a real bad reputation now. Horses are fed grains that have when they are growing been sprayed with powerful herbicides and these have been passed through in the manure and even after composting it will still kill plants. Here in Vermont our biggest compost campany was put out of business because of contaminated horse manure. There is also an issue of the fly sprays they use in horse stables.
Chicken manure from a a few chickens is great but the stuff from a modern chicken farm is gross. I have a stash of it from my own chickens that is dried to a powder and it is the best for side dressing anything in the summer.
If you can ever get it pigeon manure is one of the best for special crops.
For your allotment I would get the dry dropping from the sheep and put it every where but your asparagus and rhubarb would love a mulch of sheep droppings.
You mentioned deer coming and going in an early episode, if you ever see a pile of their manure scoop it up for you garden, it is good stuff and worth the effort to pick it up. I have done this with moose manure, it looks like sheep manure only from a 1000 pound sheep, a dry pile that crumbles easy and is great for flowers.
I saw on the allotment diary channel that there was a problem with bad commercal compost because of grass clipping from lawns the had been sprayed. The stuff out of a bag is convenient but a bad batch can ruin a garden for years. The best is your own compost and sheep manure added to your (and your dads) compost bins will make it cook a lot better.
My girlfriend has a garden the size of yours and she loves it when I bring over buckets of my manures, the best gift for a good gardener is some good manure.
This has been a long reply but it is one of the most important issues in gardening.
Get all the sheep manure you can bring home and your garden will love you for it.
Best wishes
Doug