Manure Question

if your soil is rubbish you could try raised beds. These do not need to be filled with soil, decent quality compost & aged manure will do for the outset.I build some raised gardens & chucked a whole mixture of organic matter in, including barrow loads of horse crap, & simply layered a few inchs of soil or good (backyard) compost onto the top to plant into. The first seasons veges went fine and over time the gardens have only inproved. True, for a coupe, of them I could fill them almost full of soil but for the other 3 whatever I had on hand was used. Thats my adage, use whatever is available. Bugger it, if you have the gardens deep enough you can pile a load of raw materials into the gardens and plant whilst they are still only partially rotted. I planyed tomatos into a garden full of partially rotted hay and grass clippings, with a few inchs of compost to bed into. The tomatos went well and gave me very satisfactory crop.

Have a squiz at

rob

I've never heard of anyone growing anything in pure manure. I add manure to my clay soil and dig it in or if it is very fresh I put it on the top of the soil and let the worms dig it in. Mind you, my manure is from animals and not from bags so it's the real deal YMMV.

In my raised beds I have taken to using general mushroom compost and then adding over time buckets of ash from our open fire. So long as you break it up (becomes clay like lumps in wet weather) , its seems to work really well and balance the compost out.

Too bad the bag doesn't say why you shouldn't plant directly in this stuff, rather than have the customer guessing. Well I planted in it!

Thanks for the input.

Nitrogen is your answer and what it can do to the root system.

Plug manure hot into google.

I get what you mean, hot manure would be like bat guano and would burn the roots. I don?t think this blend is that hot, though it's a bit sticky and dry hardens on top. I also added 27g each per Square foot of Ammonium Phosphate, Sulfur, and Ironite.

You should rethink the Ironite.

google "ironite lead arsenic"

Here's the first:

I got this information from John Chapman:

John Chapman's home page says... "IRONITE Spokesman".

Charlie

Hum...well what would be a safe additive that would complement the soil along with Ammonium Phosphate and Sulfur?

Thinks earth worms. The feeding and breeding and growth of earth worms.

Anything that is good for worms is good for your soil.

Worms are a gardeners best friend and if you have lots of worms in your soil, then you should have no problems. No earth wroms or only a few of them in your soil is a sign of "Dnager Will Robinson". Learn about and read about earth worms.