[cloddopper]

FW,
Can you get hold of cow muck & real straw beddings that they have over wintered on ?
 There will be all manner of nutrients and part decomposed matter in it .. it's far better than horse muck for a cows digestion kills almost all weed seeds ..a horses does not  .

 Even neat plenty cow pats  laid on th soil and broken up once they have dried out is a good soil rejuvenator .

 Imagine me as a 22 year old hunky straw haired blue eyed  golden skinned Adonis , recently back from being 7 months with the UN in a rather warm country .

I'd begged next door for their old pram they wanted to gt rid of , to go three miles to collect cow pats out a field of cows  . On bringing  them home ( five loads in a week ) drying them on wriggly tin sheets  and rubbing them to bits when dry , I spread the resulting powder about 1/8 inch deep over 40 square yards of newly dep dug destoned de weded very chalky soil 6that hadn't been dug for many a year. 
Then digging it in well before watering on in and sowing my first seeds the next day .  The only problem was I didn't know that the high nitrogen levels released in the ammonia would make carrots & other root crops look like cows udders with about the same number of roots as teats  .

That ammonia .......  it's released in decent quantities from cow & chicken muck when it's fresh or wetted . It is a natural pest fumigant , till it turns into nitrogen it is also a source of food for some beneficial fungi & moulds .

So  this idea may be of some use to you wrt red mites  as well  especially if you can close up the treated well manured & wetted tunnel for a few days .

[Fleecewife]

The Adonis bit sounded good until you mentioned dabbling in the cowpats 

The only cowpats I have access to are all from animals treated with persistent wormers.  We tried them when we first came here (not knowing about the wormers) and it was several years before there was a single worm in the pile and it started to rot properly.

What I do have is henhouse cleanings - straw bedding - and sheep shelter stuff - also straw - well mixed with droppings and urine.  We restraw the shelters frequently through the winter and especially at lambing, so it's well mixed and well soaked.  The hen stuff gets composted for about a year usually although this past winter we made the mistake of covering the heap too soon so it wasn't wet enough to rot.  It's now had rainwater, pond water and Mr F's special evening stroll additive so is well wetted and will be ready in spring.  In addition over the winter we spread the hen house stuff directly onto the soil, then when it's wet enough we cover it.  By spring it's all gone, leaving lovely useable soil.  I've never used horse dung although it looks so lovely  - gardeners are strange 

I'll try the henhouse stuff for ammonia in the tunnel as you suggest - maybe Mr F will add a little something to it.....

[Lesley Silvester]

I had a henhouse with a mesh floor. I dug out the well decomposed stuff underneath it after a couple of years and used it to fill a slightly raised bed and planted purple soprouting broccoli that a friend had spare. After a couple of weeks mine was twice the size of hers. You could practically see it grow. (sadly a passing red deer hind spotted it just before I could pick it and cleared the lot).

Goat manure also works wonders. When I had some deep raised beds built so I could continue to grow stuff after becoming disabled, they were filled with rotted goat manure and I planted straight in it. The crops did well. At the end of each year, the beds are topped up from the manure bins and always grow well. I have squashes going berserk in there this year together with leeks and a couple of massive pumpkins. The beetroot in the other bed are a good size as well.

[Anke]

Fleecewife - did you come to a solution with your soil issues in the polytunnel?

We are having similar problems, and I am trying to work out how to solve it without major (financial/time/physical investments... we have goat muck galore, and I was planning on also taking out a good portion of the existing soil, then using Rockdust and seaweed as well. Just not sure if I would be better to also get some topsoil brought in? Or would bog standard multi purpose compost (just for the top layer anyway) be more useful?

(As we are also expanding with a 3x10 Keder to be delivered in February, I will need to build up beds in there as well, but it won't be fully on-stream until next spring anyway).

[Fleecewife]

Hi Anke


We have the hens in the tunnel for the duration, and even if the restrictions are lifted we will leave them in there over the winter.  I have high hopes that they will sort most of my problems of pests and fertility.
Your goat manure sounds ideal - we use strawy sheep muck, worked in with a Mantis, very well rotted, and keep hen house cleanings for outdoor crops like potatoes.


I use seaweed meal on all the veg beds every year, indoors and out, and I think it really helps. Last year we found a huge family of voles living in the sack - lovely bedding 


We also have endless molehills and apart from the fact that the soil has to be sieved, it's very fertile for freshening up and if we can afford the time and strength then that's what we'll do this spring.  To buy in top soil sounds good as long as you know exactly where it's coming from, and what weed seeds it's going to bring with it.   When we had our front garden done the people doing it removed all my lovely volcanic topsoil and brought in some horrible clay stuff, full of weeds and stones.  I've spent several years trying to sort that.


I'll be really interested in how you get on with improving your soil.  If I remember, it's very dusty-looking, so maybe an extra dose of humus would be worth adding.  I'll also be interested in how you find your keder house.  I've seen them advertised of course......


The other thing is to encourage earthworms.  All the added humus and manure will help, but the soil also needs to be kept moist or they will stay outside.

[Anke]

Thanks for getting back. Hens in the polytunnel doesn't sound bad, but alas ours is mainly hay storage at this time of year and not fox-proof, so the chooks are just in their runs (with some improvised covers on of course).

But doooh... I hadn't thought of mole hills, plenty of those and local too... probably to be combined with some multi purpose compost. It is just that I need a soil surface to sow into, and the muck alone is not fine enough.

My Mantis went east... to my parents as they have very sandy soil and we had found that we just didn't get enough of a window to use it in spring, except in the polytunnel. My parents love it!

I am really looking forward to my Keder, massive investment though, they are not cheap... it will take us most of the summer I think to set it all up..., it will have a watering system too...

[Fleecewife]

We've found a way which works really well to make a fine tilth for sowing into directly, as long as you have earthworms.  It takes a while though and it's probably too late this year.  We just spread the well rotted FYM or compost, plus seaweed meal, wood ash, molehill soil and anything else which is going in, over the surface of well watered soil.  We then cover it closely with a tarpaulin held down with bricks or old stobs, and leave it for as long as we have, certainly right through the winter.  Once you reach sowing time, you peel back the tarp and the soil surface is weed free, fine and WARM, and ready to sow.  It's magic 


Maybe that would work well for your keder house, especially if you do it even before the house is up.

[Polyanya]

Just came across this thread and hoping your soil condition improves FW and wondered if you have done a simple soil analysis on a few areas in the tunnel? If you have an agricultural college nearby you might get some very interested students who would come an do an indepth analysis to tell you exactly which minerals you are lacking.

We grow nearly all of our veg in a massive polycarbonate tunnel (this is after our two solar tunnels blew away  ) and we up until now we've used our well rotted cow manure which as someone else said is probably the best thing you can put on soil. This year we shall be using goat and chicken manure but we make a point to leave chicken manure to rot down as it is too strong to use fresh.

Apologies if you already know this 

[Fleecewife]

You're right Polyanya, I should get a proper in depth soil analysis done.  The fact that we have splendid brassicas in there hints we have a slight pH imbalance, and no problem of general fertility.  There is an organic lab somewhere down south which does soil tests, but for a price.  I'll look into it. I think the more agricultural labs give advice which can be difficult to translate for an organic system.  if my son was still at Uni he could have done it as he studied agriculture, but that was a long time ago.


The other problem we've had for the last few years is red spider mite - like the poultry variety but sucks sap instead of blood, and they wrap all the plants up in copious amounts of webbing.  We are slowly getting on top of them, but with the poultry in the tunnel for the duration of the avian influenza restrictions, it's going to be difficult to do our usual anti-mite measures this year.  The hens kick up a heck of a stour though with their dust bathing, so I'm rather hoping that will suffocate the mites - it certainly gets to me 


I usually have a lot of veg packed into the tunnel so it's a bit of a jungle.  This means the mites spread from plant to plant, and the air circulation might not be as good as it could be.  I shall be growing less this year, so each plant has more space.  But I will get the soil tested 

[Polyanya]

Fleecewife I am by no means an expert but I have been growing veg for a few decades and like yourself we run our croft on organic principles which I genuinely believe requires a somewhat 'intuitive' approach to gardening. The splendid brassicas to me might suggest a soil too rich in nitrogen, which might point to the fresh chicken poo? So if the soil and all the tiny micro-organisms that make up the soil are imbalanced, the pests move in. This may be a bit over simplistic but possibly worth looking at?

Wrong time of year I know but foliage is a good indicator if anything is amiss - you know yellowing veins or edges all means plants suffering from something or other. The RHS has a really good section about recognising soil deficiencies from the colour of leaves in one of their vegetable growing books, might be worth a trip to the library 

I really feel for you with the spider mite problem - we have very few issues with pests in Shetland (too blummin cold!) but had an infestation of earwigs in the solar tunnel a few years ago - it got very bad with courgette plants in particular being decimated, until we noticed a blackbird visiting via a ventilation vent we'd left open all winter, problem solved, no more earwigs 

[Fleecewife]

The hens have only been in the tunnel since early December when the restrictions were put in place, so fresh chicken droppings are a new thing. It's quite a large tunnel and only 8 birds, and we will turn it in well, but I'll watch out for burning of foliage etc in the summer.
 Normally we use well rotted sheep manure plus straw bedding from outdoor sheep shelters in the tunnel. It's composted for a year, then worked in with a mantis, but it has been suggested above that that is disturbing the soil structure. It does cause a slight pan, but we are used to that so break it up regularly, and anyway our soil is well drained.
Outside we use well rotted chicken house cleanings, again with straw, or we lay it fairly fresh on the ground, cover with a tarpaulin and leave for a year, by which time it's been broken up and taken down into the earth by worms.  Everything is ok outside, except that like you only the hardiest stuff grows outside here - too windy and cold. That's why I was stuffing the tunnel with plants, but now I will grow less and allow more space and air for each plant.


I looked up soil testing kits and lab services and the useful ones which do trace elements are expensive.  pH and N,P,K testing kits don't get good write-ups for being inaccurate.  I'll investigate RHS a bit more - can't remember if they do trace elements too.  I have to decide if the cost of a good lab service is worth it, or if I should just continue trying out possibilities and see how well each one works.


Mr F has decided that today we will spread a thick layer of molehill soil over the whole tunnel and let the hens work it in, and pick out any weed seeds.  Hopefully that will reintroduce enough soil which hasn't been exhausted by growing in such a restricted space for 21 years.  It will also introduce stones, which I'll spend the next few years picking out....

[Fleecewife]

I've been working through the soil chemistry section in Geoff Hamilton's Organic Gardening book.  He goes into detail about all the trace elements, including the less frequently mentioned ones.  I don't recognise any of the symptoms mentioned from recent years in the tunnel.  His treatment for nearly all the imbalances is to treat with seaweed meal.  We add seaweed meal every year, so I'm happy that I don't need to pay for one of the exorbitant  in depth lab checks, but I shall do the simpler pH, N,P,K checks.  I haven't done pH for several years, and I've never done N,P,K. 
So it looks like we will put our hopes in those tests and in the addition of many barrowloads of molehill soil 

[pharnorth]

Anglian soul to a greenhouse soil test for under £12, includes the pH, N, P and one or two others if you are not convinced by the accuracy of a test kit might be worth posting them a sample?

[Polyanya]

Gosh it does seem like you are doing everything right doesn't it  , but the mole hill soil sounds like a good idea and the other thing we've done from time to time is to buy a few bags of potting compost (not seed) and adding a couple of handfuls around each plant. Sorry I can't be more helpful  Shame Geoff isn't around anymore, he was the best!

[Fleecewife]

Anglian soul to a greenhouse soil test for under £12, includes the pH, N, P and one or two others if you are not convinced by the accuracy of a test kit might be worth posting them a sample?

I looked them up but their latest price list is 2014 - are you sure they're still on the go?  In addition to pH, N,P,K they also do magnesium and EC - anyone know what that is?  If they are still working, then they do sound the cheapest - same as buying a kit and kits sound less accurate.  Thanks for the info.