A pong too strong for my lovely toms

FURTHER to the letter about manure on roses (Peterborough), I had a similar experience when I was 14. At the beginning of World War II, all men of a certain age had to do fire watching one night a week in case of air raids. I did my first stint at a church hall near where I worked (where we were lucky enough to have a snooker table). The morning after, I went out early with a bucket and spade, like your earlier correspondent, to collect horse manure from the roads, as lots of goods were still delivered by horse and cart. I put this around my tomato plants by the side of a shed with rain dropping off a corrugated iron roof to keep them watered. But in my youthful enthusiasm, I scraped away the soil and put as much manure as I could round the plants . . . then wondered why the leaves turned a funny shade of yellow. I didn’t know that you were supposed to decompose manure first!

Ken Adams, Poole, Dorset.