Ah! I tried another search for "aged" and got my answer - my search for "manure" had so darn many posts I couldn't find anything! You folks sure do love to talk poop! LOL!

I'm seeing that manure 6+ months old can be used in the garden without much fear of contamination. I will be growing lettuce and carrots...so I want to double check that answer hasn't changed. What I'll be getting is horse and cow poo that has been sitting outside for 9+ months.

Thanks!

Can anyone confirm for me that this age of manure will be okay? I don't want inedible veggies!

Can't confirm it from this far away. Why don't you bring some to my house and I'll confirm it for you!

Or I could tell you how to do it yourself but then I'd have to compost you.

No matter what it looks like, smell it. If you can plunge both hands into a pile and slam your face deep into the heaping mound to smell something that smells as fresh as a forest floor after a spring rain, then it is finished. If it smells sour, rank, dank, moldy, yeasty, like your shoes, acrid, or anything else besides fantastic, then it is not ready. As a general rule of thumb, bad things smell bad and good things smell good. That's why God gave us noses.

Well, if you want to come up from Texas, I'm sure my friends would give you some too!

Thank you for your answer. I'll look the stuff over (or smell the stuff over - but I draw the line at the face-plant) and if it's right I'll add it to the garden - if not, into this spring's compost pile.

Some people are reading todays strong recommendation that no manure be added to a garden more than 90 to 120 days before harvest as the time to add "fresh" manure and that is not what is being suggested. All the Ag Schools I have looked at lately are strongly advising that all animal manures be aged 12 months before being applied to garden soil. That 90 to 120 day advise is meant for this aged manure, do not add manure that has been aged 12 months to your garden sooner than 90 to 120 days before harvesting food from that garden.
Since simply "aging" manure is a waste of the nutrients in that manure it is best to compost that manure, mixing it 1 part manure to 3 parts vegetative waste.

Thanks kimmsr. That is how I was reading it - that fresh was 120 days, and aged was okay if 4-6 months old. (That is - it would already be 120 days old I guess?) Glad to find out what this really means.

Turns out it's going to rain the day I'll be working anyway, so I probably won't get to my friends' houses for their cow and horse stuff - but when I do get the chance, I'll put it right in the compost pile! I'm emptying my bin this weekend and repairing it so it'll be ready to go!

I think the "waste" of aged manure is often overstated on this forum. It may be true that aging manure isn't the best way to bring about the best nutrients, but I'd guess that most people aren't sitting around making a conscious decision that aging their manure is the best course of action.

People use aged manure because the local farm or stable had some laying around, and they were willing to give it away for free. Alternatively, they age it rather than properly composting it, because they didn't have the time, inclination, or resources to do much else...but at least they got some manure!

Aged manure might not stand up against properly composted fresh manure, but often that isn't the choice that's available to us. More often, the choice is aged manure or no manure at all...and when I'm looking for inexpensive additions to my garden, I know what I'll take.

I think the "waste" of aged manure is often overstated on this forum.

I agree. If you look at the charts that compare nutrient content of various animal manures, aged cow manure has a nutrient content quite a bit higher than that of fresh cow manure. Composting the manure does not necessarily ensure that more nutrients are available since by nature the composting process will breakdown the nutrient content and a portion of it will be consumed by the soil organisms as well as a portion that is volatized to the atmosphere.

I'm sure that old manure is still good stuff, just based on experience. I grew up on a farm and I distinctly remember my father cleaning out the chicken house and mixing handfulls of the old bedding/poo right into the planting holes for his vegetables. I remember him picking up dried old cowpies and using them the same way. Pity I don't remember more about his gardening techniques, but I hated to garden as a kid. 20 years ago I'd have laughed in your face if you suggested I'd actually consider voluntarily picking up manure - even with a shovel. (For some reason, the sight of Dad putting his bare hands in poo stuck with me. LOL!)

I'm beginning to wonder if some definitions and/or clarifications might be in order (again/still).

I seem to be reading that "old", "aged", "fresh" or "raw" mean different things to different people (sometimes different things to the same person at different times). I wonder if there should be a narrowing of classifications, something like treated or untreated. Treated meaning composted using certain guidelines or pasteurized somehow. If it hasn't been treated then it is untreated and all other manures would be in that classification no matter how "old" they may be.

It might smell nice, it might look nice, it might be really old, but if it hasn't been treated, then it ought to be handled as untreated and the appropriate number of days from application to harvest recommendation would apply.

Now there is nothing stopping anyone from doing whatever they wish for their own gardens but when someone asks the forum a question, we should all be on some sort of same page when it comes to answers and discussions

And by all means when stating "facts", please link the source so we can read it ourselves.

I don't do manures. So I don't know the answer to the question but after looking at some of the data out there, I think I would be comfortable with the National Organic Program guidelines.

Lloyd

Here is a link that might be useful: National Organic Program

Keep in mind Lloyd that the USDA standards are a compromise set of standards that the real organic farmers do not agree with. Growers that want to be able to use the "Organic" label without actually being organic also have input and they weaken the standards so those standards are meaningless.

Okay Mr. Miller, how about some links to any of the people you get your standards from. I would really appreciate reading them myself rather than getting it second hand.

Lloyd

the USDA standards are a compromise set of standards that the real organic farmers do not agree with

Not that this has anything to do with the question at hand, but why do you say this? What do you have to back up such a statement? I am unaware of any certified organic farmers that do not agree with this federal policy that defines organic production in this country.

I correspond regularly with organic farmers all around the USA and talk regularly with the local organic farmers, and wanna be organic farmers. The wanna be farmers find even the current standards too difficult and want them loosened while those that have been organic farmers for some time find them not restrictive enough.

Because of my profession, I too am in contact with a lot of organic growers and I have never encountered any certified organic grower complain about the restrictions being too loose. All in all, most think that the certification process, the record keeping and the annual testing that accompanies it adequately addresses and maintains organic standards. I'm sure not all organic growers agree on all points but then the same thing can be said about any horticultural/agricultural issue. There are regulations and standards in place that limit what can legally be called "organic" produce, the process one must follow to achieve that rating and if anything the standards are getting more restrictive rather than less so.

Besides, what in the world does organic growing standards and the NOP have to do with the suitability of manures and when/how to use them? These are issues that are only tangentially related. It is important to remember that this forum reaches a very broad audience and adhering to organic growing standards, however one chooses to define them, is not a requirement of participation nor should it be the only determinant for providing valid gardening information.

Hi Pam

It was probably me that brought up the NOP standards in reference to timing guidelines in the application of manure. Not being familiar with any guidelines, I googled and found the NOP 90/120 day guidelines, which were the only actual rules I could locate. Another person claims these guidelines were somehow not valid and it went from there.

Some members are using various descriptors (old, aged, raw, mature etc) of the manures that seem to be causing people to distinguish with what they think is meant, hence my musings on treated versus untreated diatribe.

I still haven't seen a valid answer to the OP original question backed up by any credible link that gives timelines such as the NOP. And until such time as I get such a reference, I have to believe that those guidelines are ones that people should be referred to. Of course one can choose (or not) to apply such guidlines as they see fit, it is their choice.

But now that I think about, what the hell do I really care who people listen to and what they do with their manure, raw, old, aged or otherwise.

Lloyd

I am really beginning to hate winter!

Lloyd, the recommendations provided by NOP should be just as valid as any other source - perhaps more so - and do have some sound logic behind them. My objection was how that reference got sidetracked into a discussion that had nothing to do with aged or composted manures :-) As so many discussion seem to do around here with everyone's personal agenda taking precedence over answering the question at hand or even providing accurate information.

I agree that it would be helpful if someone could establish some accepted definitions of what exactly is aged, fresh, dried, wet, or composted manure and the relative drawbacks or advantages to each. It seems that each resource has its own definitions depending on who their audience is, with the possible exception of 'composted' manures, which is pretty self-defining.

But to go back and address the OP's question, I wouldn't hesitate to use a manure that has been sitting around since 2007 on anything, edible or not. I don't think there's any argument with that being sufficiently aged.

A lot of time I find aged manure is composted as there is a lot of bedding and stuff in it at certain farms so seeing how they do things might make a big difference to