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If you have farms nearby, it may be easy to find free manure. This is a guide about finding free manure.
If the cow manure is fresh it is considered hot, as it is still releasing nitrogen and ammonia that can damage plant roots. To cure, it needs to be hot composted for 6 months. This is a guide about curing cow manure.
Manure is a nearly perfect natural fertilizer that can be used throughout your garden. This is a guide about using cow manure in your garden.
Composted chicken manure when mixed with your topsoil makes a great fertilizer. This is a guide about using chicken manure as garden fertilizer.
Alpaca manure makes a great soil conditioner for your garden, it improves soil quality, water retention, and is a good fertilizer. This is a guide about using alpaca manure in your garden.
If you live near a horse or cow pasture, you live near a fertilizer "factory." My husband and I have, in the past, gathered several piles of horse manure from a field behind our house. We would just put wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load into two big piles under a tree, put a few worms that were dug up with one of the piles in them, and let them do the work.
My mother had told me that it was the way that her family did it, using the two work horses' manure to fertilize gardens and trees. We let dead leaves fall into it during fall and winter, sometimes contributing food scraps. By spring, we had nice, labor-free fertilizer for our pecan trees and tomatoes.
Source: My mother, who grew up on a farm during the Depression
Ask a QuestionHere are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community or ask a new question.
How do you make poop pods out of horse or cow manure to fertilize a garden or flower beds? The ingredients are mixed together and placed in a ceramic mold to dry and placed in garden, but what are all the ingredients that are mixed? When it rains the garden is fertilized that way.
Hardiness Zone: 6a
By Rachel from PA
I never heard of anyone putting it in molds. My dad used horse manure this year on his garden and its going crazy, everything is getting huge. Make sure the manure your using is dried and just crumble it up and till it into the soil.
Crumbled old poop is what you want. You can't use every poop on every garden. Know how much you can. Sheep is a universal. Cow/etc have their place. Just amount varies not to burn your garden. We had gone out to an old farm site of sheep and gotten old, old stuff, was wonderful. It is hard to find sheep poop at the garden centers. Mennard's happened to have it this year and I got.
I have access to chicken, horse, and cow manure. What is the best way to add manure to a garden getting it ready for Spring planting?
Hardiness Zone: 8a
By Cheryl from Phenix City AL
Is the manure fresh? I'd say the best way to add it would be to let it compost first for a few months. Manure that's too fresh can "burn" plants because it's strong. Chicken manure is great, though, because of all the nitrogen it contains, and all three are great fertilizers when composted, so you've definitely got a good source of "black gold."
If you want to add some now, incorporating a *little* into the soil would be one way, making sure it's mixed well so the roots won't run into a clump of pure manure. Another way, if you have established plants already, would be to add a *very* small amount to the surface and let rainwater slowly percolate it down through the soil to the roots.
I managed to kill a newly planted apple tree many years ago by thinking I was helping it by adding a nice thick dressing of fresh horse manure. Uh, no. That was a mistake, as I later learned.
I used to feed my garden a manure cocktail every fall and again in the spring. What I would do is make a slurry of the solids with water in a big plastic tub and pour it over the garden. In the spring this was done when the soil could be worked but before plants were coming up, and never over seeds. It was roughly about 1/3 manure to 2/3 water. Mmmm good! I think it's why I have a good earthworm population now. Best and easiest is if you let it decompose in a compost pile. Let it rot a little so it won't burn your plants, or alienate your neighbors.
