Selfsufficientish.com

Hello everyone, nooby on board, be gentle with me.


Two questions so I thought I'd lump them together.

Firstly, a friend gave me several sacks of horse manure about 6 months ago, after googling and finding out that I had to build another composter to heat it to a certain temperature blah blah blah, I got rather demoralised so left it in the sacks. Anyway, the question is, can I chuck it straight on the garden? How long (roughly) does it take to mulch down so I can use that veg patch? Is this a good or bad idea?

Right next.

I'm looking for a FREE virtual vegetable gardening planner so I can plan out this year's crop. Get all the roots together, greens together which should make watering easier. I'm also into companion and moon planting so if the site incorporates that as well so much the better.

In regards to the first question, poop is as complicated as you want it to be. I'd just chuck it in and till it well. Certain plants will do better in fresh (?) manure than others. Seems heavy feeders like corn and squash like it, root veggies like potatoes or beets don't like it.

I'll let someone else answer the second question, my garden planning often amounts to reaching into a box and planting whatever comes out.

Hello fellow France dweller!!!

I can only answer your first question I'm afraid, and my opinion would be, that after 6 months in bags (plastic I presume) the manure should be a hot compost already all by itself, so use it around your veggie plot well dug in, but don't plant carrots, parsnips or other roots that dislike 'fresh' ish compost. The best thing I've found is to just bung on some squash seeds which adore horse manure and you'll have a bumper crop, or around your bean patch.

Fatima wrote: I'm looking for a FREE virtual vegetable gardening planner so I can plan out this year's crop. Get all the roots together, greens together which should make watering easier. I'm also into companion and moon planting so if the site incorporates that as well so much the better.

I've got Excel on my PC and I use that because I know how to merge cells and columns and add colours which is all you really need. If you don't have Excel amongst your MS Office stuff you can download the free Open Office stuff from here http://www.openoffice.org/ and use the Calc element which is exactly the same as Excel.

This seems to be a good guide to companion planting http://www.companionplanting.net/Listof ... lants.html

Hope that helps.

Hi there!

Well your first question has been answered and here's my suggestion for your second.... I use growveg.com's tool (it's free for one month, you can print off details you need) but I don't think it makes good use of companion planting, and especially not lunar planting!

Worth a look though

Salut Absfairy When you say squash, you're talking butternut squash? Yes? Or any type of squash, gourd, potimarron etc.?

Thanks for the advice everyone very helpful.

Salut Fatima

(ohh I like Salut Absfairy I almost sound as though I am slim and healthy like that )

Yes any squash, butternut, halloween pumkins (I grow big max's for halloween and then the chucks and ducks love the leftovers), etc etc etc.

Monika