The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: pgkevet on October 14, 2013, 02:17:58 pm
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I always reckoned on it taking me 2-3 years to improve my soil (from being meadow) and last year turned in a good several tons of rotted horse dung, wood chippings and assorted vegetable matter.
Potatoes, Pulses, Brassicas, Carrots, Sweetcorn, Squashes, Physallis - all grew brilliantly and way way more than I needed so i was giving surplus away to anyone that wanted it.
BUT my onions, leeks and parsnips are still worthless.
I can't find any obvious info on specific nutrient requirements.. Thnking of soil analysis unless anyone has an idea? Nigbours a mile away get excellent crops of those - but my spuds were better than theirs.
I've tried onion sets, seeds and transplants and the transplants and leek seedlings grown in potting compost were superb prior to planting out..then they just sat there staying similar size/growing very very slowly. Parsnips were sown at the same time as carrots..and the carrots are huge, parnsips half the carrot size!
It's got to be some micronutrient/mineral issue but I can find nothing on the web ...
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When did you sow the parsnips, leeks and onions? They all take a long time to mature, and parsnips in particular and leeks less so may not be ready until later in the year. I have had consistently poor performance from parsnips for the past three years because the ground wasn't workable until too late in Spring. Parsnips don't like being transplanted although leeks seem to love it.
That first apparent standing still after planting out is in fact hiding some frantic root growth below ground - a bit like a duck paddling like mad, but from the surface all seems serene.
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I was very excited to dig up my beautiful looking parsnips a couple of days ago. Despite having two foot high leaves, and the top of the parsnip looking 2-3 inches wide, they were only about 1 inch deep! Complete waste of time and space. >:(
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If I remember rightly you need to 'bank up' leeks to keep the light out, so the soil level gets higher. It's only what is covered by soil that will be white. I have also been told that toilet paper rolls can work when you can't bank.
Dans
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When did you sow the parsnips, leeks and onions? They all take a long time to mature, and parsnips in particular and leeks less so may not be ready until later in the year. I have had consistently poor performance from parsnips for the past three years because the ground wasn't workable until too late in Spring. Parsnips don't like being transplanted although leeks seem to love it.
That first apparent standing still after planting out is in fact hiding some frantic root growth below ground - a bit like a duck paddling like mad, but from the surface all seems serene.
I sowed onions and leeks periodically in modules in the greenhouse as early as february.. every couple of weeks. (I'm still experimneting here) but the best leek seedlings for transpant were sown April in deep pots in the greenhouse..lovely thick pencil stems and 10 inch roots on them that obviously had to be trimmed when dibbled and watered into the outside plot end May. parsnip and carrot seeds directly sown around mid to end may (this is mid wales 600 feet up on my valley floor). Direct sown onions came up and faded. Onion transplants just not growing long foliage or bulking up... just look like large spring onions.
Spring onions in pots in the greenhouse do well but that's in B&Q multipurpose
Folk in the village Pub tell me they have an exceptional season for onions and parsnips - do nothing but add some cow slurry to their land....
This plot I;m using was meadow hay... a good mix of grasses and local flowers ..just cut annually but never fertilized or limed. pH only slightly acid, good deep soil so we're not talking raised beds here and just to remind it was thoroughly rotted horse manured and my own wood shreddings
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That's a shame after all your hard work.
My onion bed is the first to be turned over and thus left a few months, firmed down, rakedfirmed down,raked etc. I plant sets in Feb/March after manure in the autumn. I need to use a dibber and sometimes re-set the onions if they are moved out by birds or small animals. Keep weeding.
Leeks - probabley the same as you plant them but I also cut the leaves back when cutting the roots to plant. I will cut the leaves twice more to thicken up the leeks - I do plant them with a large dibber but don't bank them up. I hate preparing leeks when there is soil between the leaves.
Parsnips - well they are a slow crop so maybe leave them a bit. My trouble is digging them up - too big !
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A couple of things I can think of. I live even higher than you, but I wouldn't leave parsnips until May to sow. They really have to go in in March at the latest to have time to grow to any size by the winter. You would have to sow them under a cloche or similar.
As your plot is a ploughed-up meadow, I wonder if you have a plague of cutworms in there (I think it's cut worms - big squishy grey things, from moths) Whatever they are, they are found in recently ploughed up pasture and live just below the surface, feasting away on the roots of your seedlings and plants until they fade away or keel over. The only two ways I know of to get rid of them is a) to hunt for them and feed them to the hens, or b) sow a sacrificial crop of mustard which they will feast on then fly away to find some permanent grass to lay their next eggs in. It may not be that but it's worth a fossick around near the roots.
For leeks, I make a deep hole with a broom handle then drop in the plants and leave them to it - however, I'm doing something wrong too, because my last year's crop grew quite big but then suddenly flowered before they were quite ready to eat. Looking on the bright side, they make lovely and enormous flower heads, great for pollinators :bee:
When you say 'my own wood shreddings', do you mean used in the stable, or applied directly to the ground? Wood will rob nitrogen from the soil in order to rot so needs time to rot down away from the ground, with a nitrogen rich additive such as urine. If it's in the horse manure and it's rotted for a while then this should be enough.
I feel your pain with your leek seedlings - they sound perfect :garden:
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When you say 'my own wood shreddings', do you mean used in the stable, or applied directly to the ground? Wood will rob nitrogen from the soil in order to rot so needs time to rot down away from the ground, with a nitrogen rich additive such as urine. If it's in the horse manure and it's rotted for a while then this should be enough.
I prepared 2 x 1/4 acre ploughed areas for my growing with the plan to alternate which is used each year and within each plot the veggies are roatted as to where they're grown. The patch used this year had the horse manure and woodchip. The horse manure from my neighbour was from a heap rotted many years and a few inches depth all over ploughed and rotorvated in. The woodchip was a relatively small pile about a year old when it was ploughed in the previous autumn mixed with the dung. I'm aware of the nitrogen drop theory but that makes no sense here where other crops did so well.
I do see scattered may-bug larvae and see ocassional wireworm in potatoes but the only obvious diseases on the outdoor stuff is autumn mildew (late sown early peas - need to change variety for later sowings) and the cabbage white caterpillar issue.
Since the horse dung came from grass in the adjacent field i was thinking more in terms of some trace mineral deficiency affceting onions/leeks but can;t find anything searching the web that points to a specific. Soil analysis for that sort of thing needs to have a pointer to test for or would be way expensive.
My reading also suggested that onions don't need a particularly high N.
Next years plot has had some chippings ploughed in last year, no horse dung but did get a light dressing of rotted cow-dung this summer (no access to more horse, sadly) but also all the chicken bedding waste from our dozen chooks. I plan to chip in / plough all this years autumn prunings but add all the winter woodburner ash (residue from 10 tons logs) on top to rotorvate and then throw in a nitrogen based fertilizer to balance things come growing time.
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<<<Since the horse dung came from grass in the adjacent field...>>>
Amino Pyralid residue damage? I have experienced this in tomatoes and beans and I don't know if it would affect the plants you are concerned about. Hateful stuff - gets everywhere. Worth a check?
Other than that, see how the changes you are making work for next year - and let us know :garden:
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Now that's the sort of lateral thinking I was after - even had to go look it up ;D . BUT that would a) affect broad leaves and they were fine b) the neighbour wasn't one to have sprayed anything on his pasture and it was last limed some 10 years ago. As far as I'm aware none of his horses was on any long term meds - just the routine anthelmintic regimes and only 3 horses.
I'm waiting for a call-back from a soil analysis company ..hopefuly they will have contact with an agri college or the like that might have some inspiration.
To my theory - if the information is out there - it should be possible to make good assessment of soil mineral compositions/ weather patterns just from the wild plants established in hedgerows and field edges. Example: it's noteworthy that there's no field poppies or cornflowers within many miles of my place. O the other hand i have really superb numbers of common purple pyramidal orchids in my meadows and the roadsides are heavy in wild white garlic.
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Can't be much help on the nutritional stuff but I've never had any luck with onion seeds. It's more expensive but have you tried onions from sets sown in autumn. I've just planted mine for next year (along with garlic) after it worked so well with the same last year. They did very little over winter but did have a head start come spring.
Leeks, yes, dump them in a trench and just water them well within the trench - no need to fill it, it'll gradually fill in naturally and then you can earth up too.
Parsnip I believe is tough to germinate. I've just dug my first ever parsnip up - or rather only half of it because it was enormous but not very beautiful. I did have to sow twice and my first sowing was early March. Then filled in the gaps later but they're much smaller now.
H
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From what I remember being taught, I wouldn't plant onions into recently manured land - as you said, they don't wan t a lot of N. They always did well for me after potatoes or such, which had a lot of muck the year before, but used most of it. So they might just do better the second year.
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From what I remember being taught, I wouldn't plant onions into recently manured land - as you said, they don't wan t a lot of N. They always did well for me after potatoes or such, which had a lot of muck the year before, but used most of it. So they might just do better the second year.
That might make simple sense..could apply to the parsnips too if they're doing so well for nutrition that they cant be bothered to root deep?
As for autumn planted onions. That doesnlt really suit the way i manage alternating the 2 plots. A few garlic is one thing but several (20 metre) rows of a late maturing crop ties up the previous years plot from the viewpoint of weedkilling and improvement/ploughing. This is, and will be, very seedy weedy ground as ex meadow. Sets have to be netted until well rooted too or the crows just pull the lot up here.. same with my pea/bean sowings. I learned that the hard way.
I may stick some sets in early spring but the cost for my failures is annoying...perhap i should think longer term and grow my own sets..
Parsnips germination: My first sowing this year failed which is one reason why they were late. I was following readingon web suggesting 3 seeds every few inches. for the second sowing it was just a pretty dense sowing along 2 x 20m rows and then plenty of thinning. same with the carrots - alot of seed numbers for the root numbers But they area cheap seed.
I did sow sping onions this time last year in tubs - first in the big greenhouse then took them out while that was disinfected for it's winter break. And put them back in early february for an early crop.
Stuff that can be germinated in pots or modules gets moved around a lot here. usually start them off n conservatory and kitchen windowsills then move them either to the small cold greenhouse or the little spare space in my citrus house (just kept above freezing or leccy costs too much). But the humidity gets a bit high there so care with anything that might damp-off. First crop peas/beans/sweetcorn does well like that.
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When did you sow the parsnips, leeks and onions? They all take a long time to mature, and parsnips in particular and leeks less so may not be ready until later in the year. I have had consistently poor performance from parsnips for the past three years because the ground wasn't workable until too late in Spring. Parsnips don't like being transplanted although leeks seem to love it.
That first apparent standing still after planting out is in fact hiding some frantic root growth below ground - a bit like a duck paddling like mad, but from the surface all seems serene.
I sowed onions and leeks periodically in modules in the greenhouse as early as february.. every couple of weeks. (I'm still experimneting here) but the best leek seedlings for transpant were sown April in deep pots in the greenhouse..lovely thick pencil stems and 10 inch roots on them that obviously had to be trimmed when dibbled and watered into the outside plot end May. parsnip and carrot seeds directly sown around mid to end may (this is mid wales 600 feet up on my valley floor). Direct sown onions came up and faded. Onion transplants just not growing long foliage or bulking up... just look like large spring onions.
Spring onions in pots in the greenhouse do well but that's in B&Q multipurpose
Folk in the village Pub tell me they have an exceptional season for onions and parsnips - do nothing but add some cow slurry to their land....
This plot I;m using was meadow hay... a good mix of grasses and local flowers ..just cut annually but never fertilized or limed. pH only slightly acid, good deep soil so we're not talking raised beds here and just to remind it was thoroughly rotted horse manured and my own wood shreddings
It sounds as the reason your ground was meadow grazing is that it will not usually support any other growth.
How far can you dig down , is it grey sticky clay , does it drain well. ( dig a one foot square hole about two feet deep and fill it with water and see how long it takes to completely empty .
Can you take and post photos of the hole and the spoil out of it ??
A picture is worth a thousand words etc.
Straw'ed cow muck is a good way of introducing acid and phosphates to clay / poor soil .
Byre'd bullocks on straw give an even better acidic manure
Horse muck is not quite so acidic as their digestion system is quite different.
I use my deep high raised beds and grow 3 foot long sweet tender parsnips ..the secret lies in the soil .. slightly acid plenty of humus and free draining .. can you grow nettles on it ? If you can grow nettles galore on the land then the soil is at the ideal acidic level for most fruit & veg . You mentioned locals using cow slurry .. that's a good reason for using it.
Wood shavings , coarse sawdust and wood chip can delay the amount of nitrogen available for your plants it can take over six years or more for a high wood content based manure to have rotted enough to stop consuming the nitrogen from the dung and urine and actually start producing it ( nitrogen ) for the plants to use
When composted stable muck high in wood is left in big heaps for several years it may not have broken the wood down enough unless it has been well turned and wetted to get the rot going , instead it often just becomes desiccated or anaerobically preserved wood holding some nutrients instead . ( I think I've said what I mean )
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Like you some veg just don't seem to do well here. Carrots, potatoes and parsnips always seem to disappoint and take up space for little return. have tried to put it right for years but still no joy and have come to assume that for some inexplicable reason either the soil or site or me!!! just can't grow them. on the other hand onions, peas, beans (runner and broad) sweetcorn and beetroot always deliver. have begun phasing out those things that never do well. my friend up the road is a keen gardener and between us we have started pooling our harvests. he always has fantastic carrots and spuds but just cant grow a good crop of peas or beetroot. between us we grow to our strengths and swap the proceeds. saves wasting space and time.
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One spade depth or plough depth or 1 foot and the soil looks and feels nice. deeper than that and it's quite compacted and where i have planted trees and made deep holes for my blueberries (backfilled with ericaceous soil and sulphur chips before you ask) then it starts to be thin shale around 18 inches down and heavier as you go deeper than that.
Where the veggie patches are the ground drains well, ploughs and rotorvates nicely. It is quite exposed in the sense that there aren't any windbreaks in the prevailing direction and can whistle down the valley in early spring but hasn't been an issue during summers.
Most of the surrounding areas are used as pasture although 2 fields away did plant a sucessful fodder maize crop 2 years ago.
the oddity is that most other stuff grows really well as said: pulses, brassicas, potatoes, carrots and physallis and sweetcorn.
Physallis has been ripenng the last 2 weeks... will get some more before the frost next week. Brussells just coming in too..
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My parents always grew their own veg and had produced onions that were ok but that's all. After my dad died, my mum decided to sell up and quickly got a buyer. She started to sort the garden and emptied the contents of the well rotted compost heap onto a patch of land and raked it over. The sale fell through and there were no other takers so she decided to put in some more veg. She put onions in this patch of ground and had the best ever crop. They were huge and full of flavour.
Maybe that's your answer.
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PG .
The shale is your clue as to why you cant grow parsnips .. they need deep friable soil for the tap root .
Leeks like deep well manured soil as well , though with leeks you can try earthing them up if you can't get a decently deep enough trench of a good foot deep with the bottom also dug to a forks depth and with manure also incorporated in the bottom spit of the trench.
You can grow certain sorts of carrots and most other veg in a mere 6 inches of good growth medium .
A solution is to make bed extenders also known as hollow frames or ekes that have six inch walls ( or old car tyres etc ) and stack three high on top of the normal bed .
Fill with a well mixed medium ideally a sieved one one that contains very few bits of shale bigger than 1/4 " ( 6 MM ) but has plenty of well aerobically rotted dung and different beddings .
Add sharp sand to the mix to keep it open and easy draining as well as allowing air to move down into it .
Your bed inside the enclosure will now be about 2 feet deep and should give you reasonable parsnips or leeks.
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Three is a ball parsnip for shallower soils and so many shallow or ball roooted carrots for shallow soils that i'd be here typing for hours to tell you all the names.
These ball roots carrots and parsnips seeds can be found in the normal big seed merchants on line catalogues ( Fothergill , Unwins , DT brown etc etc.
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Interesting suggestions.
Next season I'd better experiment.. one section dug deep and fill the nw trench bottom with 'topsoil', another section scraped and swapped at standard depth with B&Q multipurpose and two sections as are one heavily fertilized and one left as is...whatever works can then be conisdered the next year.
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make your own compost it's usually far cheaper and you know exactly what goes into it, no weed and feed treated grass cuttings or consumed and expelled wed * feed treated meadow hay that have a residual plant killing component that last for two years .
Look on line for, "The Berkley 18 day hot composting method "
There are several long lists of things you can use , some quite surprising , it also moves into the theory of making a balanced compost of browns and greens which when done correctly is the absolute bees knees for your gardens .
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make your own compost it's usually far cheaper and you know exactly what goes into it, no weed and feed treated grass cuttings or consumed and expelled wed * feed treated meadow hay that have a residual plant killing component that last for two years .
Look on line for, "The Berkley 18 day hot composting method "
There are several long lists of things you can use , some quite surprising , it also moves into the theory of making a balanced compost of browns and greens which when done correctly is the absolute bees knees for your gardens .
This old man has enough trouble finding the energy to maintain my acreage and boundaries so hand turning large piles of compost isn't possible. I did experiment with using the loader for that but without a dedicated hard standing area the tractor just makes a rutty mess around it. That's why i moved to the idea of 2 plots used alternating years and mulch with waste and woodchip and plough in many months before planting.
I buy in bagged compost for use in the greenhouse and potting on seedlings.
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I've posted this some where else on site but it might be useful to you if you come back to this thread
Look online for the " back to Eden " website and see how they use well composted chipped/pulped green wood ,leaves & twigs as a mulch over a thick layer well composted manure etc.
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We used to sow our Parsnips in November and harvest after the first frosts of the following Winter, so they had a whole year to grow. They germinate at very low temperatures so a few days of sun and they started.
We couldn't grow leeks and Onions because of Onion White Root Rot. So check the roots for a white mould which attacks the roots and destroys them. They start quickly and then the growth rate slows to nothing. Unfortunately it takes at least 10 years for the ground to recover.
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Thanks for the November sowing tip Chris, I will put in nine square feet of parsnips this week all being well .
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Parsnips finally making a worthwhile size so looks like it is a need to get them sown earlier.
The leeks are still not much bigger than the good sized transplants I put in however.
Zero onions so a final go this year with more attention to checking roots and keeping them thoroughly weeded.
The way i manage my veggie patches doesn't fit with autumn plantings except for crops maturing by end june - such as garlic but I will prepare an early seed bed and see what happens with early feb sown parsnips. I can always sow more later but I want to sow some wildflower seeds and poppies (for the poppyseed) then anyway to colour one end of this plot.
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Congratulations on the parsnips.
Leek can be sown indoors rightnow . They need deep well manured with composted aged manure soil.
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Already sowed 3 days ago in deep pots now sitting on my conservatory windowsill - along wth peppers/toms and lettuce :wave:
All trays and greenhouses washed out and jeyes'd all tidy and ready.
As we all know the ground is too soggy to work - the downside of it being this mild 'cos there's stuff I wanted to direct sow in 3 weeks - poppies in particular (for poppy seed) - as well as my broad beans (ground wasn't ready autumn) and next years parsnips. Prhaps even soe outside onion seed as well as wild flowers
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Last year I grew my broad beans in the glasshouse in individual pots and planted them out when they were about three inches tall .
Not doing much in the glasshouse at the minute as the shoddy work of the erectors has really started to show itself ..
Inn this wet winter I have a near permanant 2 mm deep puddle all over the green house floor as one end of the glass house has settled to become nearly 1& 3/4 inches ( 40 mm ) lower than the others .. this is letting rain in .
I have to loosen all 14 anchor bolts and carefully cut the bitumen concrete to galv skirt joint compound before I can use three spades to carefully ease the fallen corner up and set it on blocks whilst I run a cement fillet around the big gap that will occur .
( my project for the next ten days of so )
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started my runner and french beans in pots last year.
Biggest glasshouse was built onto a low dwarf wall.. I like the extra height. Any minor leakage there soaks into the borders. My citrus house also tends to puddle..concrete floor but the polycarbonate twinwalls don't seal well enough at the corners. I siliconed one side last year and the roof - a lot of silicone.. then got lazy and drilled a drain hole at the dwarf wall base. As it happesn the extra humidity suits the citrus with low winter heat and they come out in the summer anyway.
most of my seed orders are in now... sowing onions and asters today into modules
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A final light rake of my firmed down onion patch yesterday and red and stuttgart onion sets planted out. As mentioned by others above I used well rotted manure rather than lively stuff. In fact I found 20 year old sheets of fossilised cow slurry on the floor of a barn. I had sheets of it overwintering outside and it broke down lovely when I dug it in ( December).
Luckily my soil ticks the boxes mentioned above so whilst it drains well for onions the deep soil with plenty of manure is very good for parsnips. When we house hunted I did not use much science but dug down a few areas to determine soil quality and I had a good look at the veg patches of neighbours.