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| Michael Rand: allotment gardener
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January 08: London allotment gardener Michael Rand uses the winter lull to spread manure around
'Winter is the best time for manuring, if for no better reason than there are fewer plants around, compared with warmer months, to get in the way as you sling the stuff about.'
(January on the allotment). With the festive season almost behind us and a new year looming, it's clearly time to shake the weight of those mince pies and Christmas pudding out of the system with some vigorous gardening exercise.
Quite what to do, however, can be a vexing question at this time of year. We are, after all, slap in the middle of bleak midwinter. Unless you're sensible enough to live in the Channel Islands or along the southern Cornish coast, it's unlikely you'll be doing anything interesting yet like sowing your seed potatoes.
But, no matter how grim the weather might seem, the weary fact is that the more prepared you are for spring sowing the more you'll enjoy it when it finally comes around. Which makes January emphatically the time to gird your trousers and spread some muck around.
Manure supplies
The most convenient way to get manure is obviously to buy it and have it delivered. But, if the bottom really has dropped out of your finances, it's worth asking around at any convenient riding stables or, for urbanites, the local city farm. Many such places have a disposal problem and will be glad to supply for nothing. Compared with shop-bought, the quality may be middling grade and the manure itself a bit fresh, but by no means look such a gift horse (or cow, pig, etc) in the opposite end to its mouth. Anything too fresh can always be composted, and it'll do your soil good over the longer term.
Two-fold effect
In manuring your ground you're achieving two things at once. First, feeding your plants. Well-rotted horse manure contains the three major plant nutrients in (roughly) the following proportions: nitrogen 0.7%, phosphorus 0.3%, and potassium 0.6%. All three are removed in considerable quantities when you take off your crops with nitrogen, in particular, being prone to leaching-out by rainfall. In all three cases, nutrients supplied in the form of well-decayed, natural stuff, are readily absorbed by growing plants.
Secondly, you're feeding the soil itself. The humus (i.e. organic carbon) content of manure and compost is crucial for an array of interacting physical and biological soil processes. Many are carried out on the gardener's behalf gratis by armies of soil animals,
from moles to worms to microbes, building up long-term fertility as well as providing improved water retention during dry spells.
Now is the time
Winter is the best time for manuring, if for no better reason than there are fewer plants around, compared with warmer months, to get in the way as you sling the stuff about. As for how best to do this, my advice is: no need to be fussy. Scatter your manure over the soil fairly evenly and, if so moved, roughly fork it in to half a tine's depth. Those moles, worms, microbes and the like will do the rest of the digging for you over the coming months. Scarcely any bother at all!
About the author
Michael Rand tends an allotment in North London and is the author of
Close to the Veg: a book of allotment tales, price £10.99, published by Marlin Press.
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