The Garden Is Taking Over My Life!

Ah, horse poop is the best thing in the world! Yes, I actually LOVE the smell of it, fresh or old. In fact, sometime this week I think I'll take the 4wheeler, hook on a trailer, pull it in to the corrals and load me up a bit. Since the horses have been recently evicted to pasture and is currently empty (I'm going to put my 9 year olds diary heifers in that pen, which I hope to get this week or next. Depends on when we get water back. A WHOLE other story. I have no water, gotta dig a new well and it will be probably Wednesday).

It's good you're using old manure though, if by old you mean composted. Uncomposted or raw manure has weed seeds that will take over your beds if you use it. A friend of mine made that mistake and she said she got the worst kinds of weeds and it took two years to get them all out of the flower beds!

Do you have roses? Roses LOVE manure. I read somewhere that you're supposed to apply it in fall since the dormant months are when they do their root growth.

There's a V-Shaped Scraper weeder that works wonderfully, I'm tring to find out where they sell them around here. I've seen it in action and it clears away the weedlings roots and all. A quick Internet search yeilded this picture. Don't have time to add it to TNH reviews at this moment.

Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally

not a subject I know a huge amount about, but doesn't fresh manure also burn plants? Too much reading, not enough memory capacity!!

Kerri.

How fresh? I've never had any problems with manure that was a couple of months old. We branded a month ago then turned the cattle out to pasture, so the pens have been vacant by cows and horses since then. Wheat doesn't have any problem burning with manure. Everyone around here turns their cows out in their wheat for the winter, and take them off March 1st if they are going to harvest the wheat for hay or for grain. You can SEE the spots where the cows took a dump; it's the tallest and greenest spots out there.