can anyone advise me of a suitable compost/fertiliser for rhubarb. My wife will not let me put down dung as the rhubarb pastch is near her kitchen window. The rhubarb is 2 years old but can I think do with some feeding. Thank you.
Get some mushroom compost.
Unless you're going strictly organic, a cup of 10-10-10 fertilizer sprinkled in a circle around each plant in the spring will work well. If you use compost, be sure you don't cover the plant's crown or it will rot.
Ross.
Home grown or commercial (eg spent mushroom) compost is good.
Have you tried to age your manure away from the house before applying it? I mainly use horse (but the same applies to cow and other herbivorous mammals) and after a couple of month it smells clean and earthy, you would have to have a very delicate nose or be caught on the *concept* that manure is "dirty" to object to it.
David
As David said, aged manure has little smell. You can add mulch, if your wife thinks it is unsightly or apt to draw flies. Or, you could apply your mulch, and then apply fish emulsion over the top of it.
The last thing I would tell you to do is to use chemical fertilizers. They will kill the ecology of the soil. If you have top soil now, you will lose it. As your soil dies, you will need to buy, and add, more and more chemical fertilizer to your soil to maintain the productivity of your soil. The nitrates in chemical fertilizers will contaminate the water that you and your neighbors drink (can turn babies blue), and if it ends up in a river, it will go to the sea to add to the oceans "dead zones".
By gardening organically, you not only grow clean food, but grow top soil as well.
Mixed your aged (at least 2 years old, or you will have a bunch of extra seeds sprouting in your yard) manure with compost or other purchased "manure that you got from Wal-Mart or other plant nursery outlets. I would mix it about 50/50. You could include some peat moss or sand (about 25 percent) and that way it wont look like manure either.
Dwayne
I'm of the view that anything that is going to produce good rhubarb I'd want to eat might just be a bit on the pongy side, but then I don't object to the pong of manure of blood and bone but I do object to the pong of chemical fertilisers.
chemical ferts make my nose itch and stink and all animal manures do is to produce a sense of satisfaction in feeding the garden and then I also like feeding people, gardens and animals.
It depends on the provenance of the manure. Herbivores are not necessarily eating seeds.
with compost or other
Why? Is this just to disguise it? Peat moss is rather pricey (here at least) to use in such quantities.
David
Most manure used in gardens comes from chickens, cows, horses or sheep. They all eat seeds from grass, weeds, grains, etc and they in turn will sprout in your garden. When I used it fresh, I really had a problem.
Mostly to disguise it and change the smell (if it doesn't look and smell like manure, his wife might not object to using it), but doing it this was will increase drainage, will help overcome clay in the soil, and it enriches the soil.
Dwayne
May want to try some rye or buckwheat on that clay.
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