What kind of manure is best to fertilize with?

??? A ton of any dry manure will have the same percentage of nitrogen as a hundred pounds. Percentage is always figured per hundredweight. The quantity of manure may be greater but the percentage will be the same.

Also, alpaca manure is just behind sheep for total nutrients. Dry analysis is .8-.3-.7.

Martin

While I was at once sold on horse manure, hauling it in and tilling it under, I'm even more thoroughly satisfied with what the lone pig (and the addition of many wheelbarrows full of leaves [good exercise for me in winter]) did to make such an excellent garden plot over this last winter. We actually have a garden that is really doing something spectacular this year, even if it is just a postage stamp plot. Never seen such healthy looking plants! I'm definitely working on plans for raising another in place this coming Fall.

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Yeah Martin, I get that... percentages and all.

The point being you'll get a lot more horse manure/ cow manure than you will alpaca manure or rabbit manure because they produce a lot more. So they put out a greater volume. Volume being the key word in my paragraph.

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We use goat, chicken, and rabbit manure around here with with great results. I really like these types because there is never any significant amount of weed seeds in them, except what comes with the bedding. Horse manure can be a real significant source of weed seeds if it isn't hot composted before being spread on the garden. I like the ruminant, bird, and rabbit manures more because I've already got more than enough weeds to keep me busy in the garden. But, if horse manure is the only "free" source, I'd use it. Just my two cents.
Tom

Anyone in my neck of the woods who wants free and mostly composted horse manure....Come and get it. I've got plenty and they make more every day.

If your horses are fed weeds, you will have a potential weed problem. If they are fed decent hay, no problem. I do get some weeds from the horse manure that is used here, wheat from the stable bedding straw!

Martin

that is an understatement! Rabbit manure is a 'cool' manure and can be applied fresh!

Great stuff!

Any composted is value added in the gardens.

Around here, manure is a renewable resource

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This is part of the reason why composting horse manure can be of benefit. It's uaually possible to get the temperature of the compost (through the biological action inside) high enough to kill or damage weed seeds.

Also, often the weed seeds will sprout, and when you turn the pile it kills the young plants. By the time the manure goes into the garden, it's usually weed-free.

I tend to believe and look for "Free" manure, but by far the best soil conditioner was the bags for mushroom mulch that used to be sold at the mushroom farm for $.25 cents a bag.

1/3 cow manure, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 sand.
Too bad they figured out that is was like gold to gardeners and started selling it for big bucks.
P.S. don't spread freash manure on Mother's day, when the neighbors are having a picnic.

I was at the state fair yesterday and walked thru some of the exhibits and saw this "the scoop on poop" posted on one of them with a recent study that indicated hog manure was tops, then cow manure, was next and didnt bother to read so much more because I was searching for chicken maure and it was not listed.....

so i can get the kids to shovel under bunnies cages and we can put it on the garden straight from there?

The wildlife eat all my compost at this point so i've stopped trying that until i build a animal proof unit. But we do have lots of bunny manure.

You betcha. Side dress the plants or put in the aisles and cover with dried cut grass.

Great stuff!

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What's the best manure to fertilize with? That's easy.

The kind you've got.

Anything else is purely hypothetical... I used a mix of sheep, horse and cow manure on the garden this year - I drove about six miles to get it, the farmer loaded it for me (twice) with his front end loader.

But I'd just moved in a month earlier.

This winter I'll have a growing steer and three pigs on the garden, manuring it (and digging it) themselves. It's easier to bring hay to the steer than move the manure next spring! And I'll throw in the winter's accumulated chicken bedding before tilling the garden next spring. I'm (cautiously) expecting even better yields next year... Hopefully that will be an unending cycle.

I'm not sure how I'm going to manure next year's corn/'tater patch, though. Like I said, we just moved in here this spring so our garden is limited (about 4,000 SF). Next year I'll have a half-acre of corn, plus our potatoes and dry beans will be in that patch. I'm certain I'll be using non-organic fertilizer again, but that's not what I want to do for the long term.

As I establish a crop rotation in the fields, I'll be building fertility with green manure and wintering over the larger critters there, with a bit less of the good stuff on the garden proper... but as that soil's fertility grows it will require a bit less to maintain it. And I'll have more livestock in coming years than I do this year, so that will help a great deal.

Anyway, to make a short story long and boring , that's my take on "what's best". HTH.

We will be putting in our first garden next spring. Got behind this year. I plan on turning the soil with a turning plow this fall. I have a compost pile going already but have not shoveled and piled up the manure from the pig pen or any of the cow manure in the field either. Good project for my kids to do before going back to school. Ill pile it up and let it compost. Im guessing I wait to apply it to the field until next spring and dont put it on this fall. Do I sow it into the ground before planting or after?

Spread as much as you have this fall and plow it under, even if some is very fresh. The bacteria in the soil are a better composter than you'll find in a pile. By the time you get around to planting in the spring, the nutrients will have been released into the soil and ready for the plants to feed off of.

Martin

If you can find it Llama Manure is very clean, reasonably odor free and llama use communal piles so its easy to scoop up.

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