Manure vs. Blood Mean vs. Bone Meal

[jmeeter]

I am going to be rototilling my garden pretty soon. This is the first time anything other than grass and weeds will be grown here. A friend has offered to provide me with "all the manure I could ever want" for free. Will this be sufficient for soil preparation? Or should I also be adding the blood and bone meal? I will also be adding dolomitic lime as a pH buffer. Any other tips for soil preparation?

I will be growing everything from A-Z so I don't think it would be practical to add any "plant specific" fertilizers. Just general, all purpose...

 

[patandchickens]

First, have you ever had your soil tested. (If not, if you worry about these sorts of things then it would be well worth the [low] price). That'd give you an idea of which way you would want to be heading.

Second, is this fresh or well-composted manure, and from what? If it's from horses I'd be cautious, horse manure is often quite weedy (other livestock not so much). And you don't want to put fresh, or fresh-ish, manure into ground you're soon going to plant.

In absence of a soil analysis, I would either till in moderate (like 4") amounts of well-composted non horse manure, or nothing at all. Then, in mid- or late summer, have a soil analysis done and amend things in the Fall based on what you find. (you *could* have an analysis done now, but then I'd suggest having it repeated anyhow in the fall if you've added any amendments, which you probably would have b/c otherwise why *bother* having the analysis done now )

There are other ways to do it, but I think the above is a pretty reasonable approach.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[obsessed]

I agree with Pat. Mostly cause she seems to know everything. And it sucks to try fumbling through bad soil. I had soil that was so poor nothing would grow. I would have saved tons of time and a bit of money to do the soil analysis early.

 

[digitS']

My Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening says that "steer manure" rates .7%N, .3%P, .4%K. So, you see that manure would be somewhat well-balanced if we think of garden fertilizer as 1:1:1. Of course, manures vary widely.

I once went to a horse arena since they had a sign on the gate for "Manure, Will Load." I couldn't see the stuff 1st but the guy on the tractor said he would "guarantee" that it would grow a garden.

Worse stuff I've ever seen - it must have been well over half wood shavings. I paid a price for the nice clean stables they must have had there. I think this was the last time I used ammonium sulfate in the compost pile. It went there and not the garden.

When you look at price, composted manure always seems to be the best buy if it is at all comparable to what the book says. With that fairly small measure of nutrients but application "by the inch" in your garden, it should go along way to increasing the fertility of the soil while adding important moisture-retention and improving the general tilth .

Mostly to avoid all the material handling, I buy commercial organic fertilizer. Manure goes in the compost these days. And, I've made my own mix using wood ashes, bone meal, and blood meal. I don't plan on doing that again. There are some things that aren't very comfortable to handle even if they aren't heavy - blood meal falls in that group :/.

Steve