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When is manure safe?
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Posted by rosecats (My Page) on Sun, Nov 15, 09 at 16:41
| Sorry, sorry, I know this subject has been done to death. However....
Whenever I pick up manure that's remotely fresh, I compost it for awhile to render the nasty organisms ineffective. How do you know when manure is at that stage? People often say the manure is about a year old, which sounds safe enough, but it often looks like some fresh offerings have been heavpd atop the pile. Furthermore, I'm never sure the stuff has heated up, if the farmer says they scooped up everything in the field, & there's a certain measure of vagueness about when that occured.
How d'ya know? Thanks. |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: When is manure safe?
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- Posted by pt03 3 Southern Manitoba (My Page) on
Sun, Nov 15, 09 at 19:17
| Short of complex testing, I guess there isn't a sure fire way to know. But here is a not bad thread on almost the same subject. It is mostly referring to food crops so if you are doing flowers it might be different. Lloyd |
RE: When is manure safe?
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| Thanks for the link, Lloyd. Good discussion, and I found the link to OTA particularly helpful. I shouldn't tell you this, since you're in Manitoba, but my current concern is for root veggies I'm growing this winter. I haven't added any manure yet, and now I won't since I'm not sure how fresh it is. I'll just get a good head of steam going on that big pile outside! My favorite sentence from the other discussion: "I realize that you think you understood what you thought I said but I don't believe you understand that what I said wasn't what I meant."! Oh, life! |
RE: When is manure safe?
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The USDA says you should not apply manures to soil that will be growing food crops for a minimum of 90 days before harvesting those crops, 3 months. Manures applied to soils, even if tilled in, produce that distictive animal manure odor which is nutrients escaping to the atmosphere. Properly composting manures helps capture, and stabilize, the nutrients in manures so more are available to the plants. If the soil does not have adequate levels of organic matter many of the nutrients in manures can flow out of the soil and into the ground water after rains or irrigation.
All animal manures should be properly composted before going into the garden. |
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