Manure for garden fertilizer

How do you guys apply manure to your fields and or garden.

1 Just pile it on. More is better.

2 Based on nitrogen needs

3 Based on P and K needs

I have always considered composted manure a great balanced fertilizer so I used #1.
Now I am finding my phosphorus levels are getting high.
I am wondering how many may be in the same boat and do not realize it.

Around here most soils are high in phosphorus already. We use copious quantities of rabbit barn, sheep barn and goat barn material in our garden. Disk it down, and plow it under every spring, so I'm not dealing with a lot of undigested straw on the surface. Probably should do a soil test, but think I already know pretty much what the results will be.

Yes, manure will definitely do it, my oldest Son has a Pecan orchard he bought maybe 5 years ago, people have run cows in the orchard for 80 years and he continues to do so. He had over 400 ppm Phosphorous the first soil test and since that time he has planted many new trees he buys from Texas AM. He was talking to one of the researchers at the university and described some problems with his trees and the guy immediately said high phosphorous, told him to spread dry phosphorous free fertilizer and add zinc plus spray his trees and the grass with a solution of zinc and iron, it has been helping his grass production and pecan production.

Manure is difficult to come by around here as the limited number of producers (AKA Amish) utilize nearly everything they produce for their own purposes. As to the topic over application is possible for plants such as tomatoes which are sensitive to incremental volumes of nitrate. Some soils here also are prone to phosphates and nitrates leaching down to the water table. If I could access manure there would be a use plan relative to the plant types to be planted.

In farming, I have my soil tests pulled on 5 or 2.5 acre grids, they take about 8 tests from each grid.

Get maps and data back in a week or two, and the coop can then apply fertilizer to each grid area exactly what is needed for that spot, different rates of P, K, and somewhat N, so I don't under apply or over apply for what the crop will need.

We soil sample every 4 years. After some years now, they are just applying a flat rate of fertilizer, as my high and low fertility spots are nearly balanced out to even. It is not 'cheaper' to do this, but the fertilizer I buy goes where it is needed, and the plants will use it. In the end I get more dollars in my pocket from better yields and healthier plants, and my soil will not wash out excess fertilizers from the over applied spots I used to have.

And this is where I have to laugh at, and wonder at, the claims of organic being more sustainable and 'better' for the planet. I'm not opposed to organic, but a few of the extreme organic proponents have really gone overboard on all that..... I don't mean to put down organic, just some of the wild claims by some sellers......


My neighbor from town moved out to a farm site, put in his garden. Bought a new shiny compact tractor, tiller, fancy pretty fence around the garden spot. You know the type. He hauled in a lot of manure, and tilled it in, worked it, oh he made it so rich..... And by fall he had almost no produce, he had a very tall, rank, green, garden with all vegetation, no actual produce.

When he asked around and looked into it, he found the spot he put the garden on used to be the old mud wallow of the old hog barn, and the P and K soil test readings were off the scale too high. And he added a lot of extra manure to start.... He had to learn what farming/gardening is all about.

Composted manure is better, it has some of the weed seeds cooked out of it. Fresh manure can bring in a whole lot of seeds.... As well, I get a bit squeamish with fresh manure and garden produce that is in or touching the ground? My corn and beans the grain is many months removed from a manure application, but a garden patch can be producing something in less than 30 days.....

In any case, when using manure you probably have to watch your P levels. Different manures offer very different fertility levels tho.

Chicken and poultry manure is very hot and a little bit goes a long ways. Be careful, even to a farmer used to dealing with many tons over many acres, the value of poultry manure is easy to overdo without realizing it.

Hog manure is typically very hig in P, and will not be enough K and not enough N for grass crops so you need to add something else to make those up. BUT some new ways of feeding hogs creates a manure that is actually very low in P, then N becomes the limiting factor and you don't get enough P from this, as well as the manure being worth less. Also if the manure comes from momma pigs, baby pigs, or finished pigs makes a big difference in its nutrient type.

Dairy and cattlemanure is valuable but has low values of N, P, and K per ton, so it's hard to get way too much on?

Horse manure tends to be pretty low value, sometimes hardly worth hauling. Especially if wood bedding, or massive amounts of straw bedding are used, this manure can tie up more N than you get P and K from it, messing up your garden balance. It can be composted for several years to make a good low value fertilizer, but consider the time and value before hauling very far.

So, there, a lot of 'it depends' instead of good hard answers....

For a garden I would sure composite manure before putting it on. Kills some weed seeds and most all pathogens. It is a mellowed, easier to spread product after composting.

I would soil test the garden, some extension type places might get you a free sample, or $25 isn't much to know where you are at. Get an even mix of 8-10 spots around a small garden, exactly 6 inches deep, mix it all, and send a small sample bag in. You don't need every year, just even once to see what you got going on in your dirt?

If your garden is low in ph, fix that with lime. Nothing else matters much with low ph, an acid soil holds on to nutrients more than the roots can pry it away, so manure and fertilizer don't help much. Fix ph first. (Roots put out an acid to loosen and grab nutrients from the soil - if the soil is already very acidic, the roots can't overpower that and come up empty, even in a rich soil.....)

Then see what your soil is real high and real low on, and add stuff to balnce it out. You don't benifit from real high of something; a person wants the soil a little above medium, to not quite high in everything. That is a real nice balnce for your crops to grow in. There are many organic products that can balance whatever is low, build only that low part up.

Once you get your soil balanced, things will grow better. It will be night and day different!

And then you can add some composted manure and so forth to keep things humming along year to year. Composted manure is especially good at adding the micro nutrients back into your soil. The fertilizer truck can add thrm too, I get sulfur and boron and something es others of these added, a few lbs per acre; but manure is a great source of these things for a garden plot, easier to use the manure for the micros, really.

No, you don't have to do any of this. In general throw seeds in the ground, hoe a few weeds, and you get a crop in the end. But if you go through the work of all that, might as well get one soil test, know where you are at, and work to balance your soil? Doing it right isn't any more work and only $25 extra, and the results by fall are amazingly different?

On my farm, I am hauling away 2.5 times more bushels per acre than dad did 40 years ago. Think how much nicer your garden will be if you look at the details a little bit.

Soil health isnt about 'more organic manure' it is about finding the right balance of all the parts to make the crops love to grow without any excess stuff wanting to wash out. I think that is exactly what your question is and good for you to ask, I think I sound preachy here I don't mean that, just sitting here waiting for $20,000 worth of fertilizer to be delivered and you really got me thinking on the topic.

Paul

WOW Paul; Thank You

I started with a hard clay acid soil.
So hard it takes a pickax to dig a hole.
The kind of stuff you need to beat off the shovel if it is a little wet.

So I took the tractor and dug a garden size hole about 8 inches deep.
I filled the hole to ground level with horse manure with shavings; leaves and grass clippings.
I then put rail road ties around the garden making it a 6 inch raised garden.
I put the soil out of the hole back on top.
After the manure and leaves composted I plowed it mixing the compost with the original clay.
Did a soil test and added lime.

Never really paid attention to the ratio of NPK to each other.
Would add some composted chicken manure and a all around commercial fertilizer like 13/13/13
Only being a small family garden one thinks "if you over fertilize you are only wasting money"
Garden did well but last few years has been in decline.
At first you take it as a bad year. But over and over something is wrong.
So I did another soil test and was told my P is to getting high.
Doing some reading I think the manure is doing it.
Should have been using something like urea to balance the manure rather than the 13/13/13
I need to pay more attention to the NPK ratio in the future.

My garden is on the top of a hill,red clay and had no top soil left when I started.I've added horse,goat,chicken,rabbit and cow manure.Added lime,Planters II,Kelp,wood ashes and tons of old hay as mulch.
I now have over 12 inches of nice workable top soil that'll grow anything,Never took a soil test.Goat and rabbit manure will do a garden more good than anything I've seen.

My soils here in Minnesota are kind of hard clay soil or mucky peat soil, both high to very high in ph.

It is difficult to correct a high ph condition economically. You can slowly modify it, or work with it. But there is no easy fix like low ph has.

Our soils are very rich here, where snow and cold keeps the top soil from burning away all year long. Our organic material stays around, my farm averages over 4 for organic material. In your part of the world in heavy tillage over the years, your organic material burns away, and you can get real low. That is why much of the country is concerned about retaining, or rebuilding, organic material by changing tillage practices and using cover crops even on the big farms. This is not so much of up in my cold neck of the woods, we are more concerned with too wet and too cold in spring.

If your soil test shows a CEC number, that is how much 'holding capacity' a soil has, it relates well to how much N you can store in the soil, hoe much water stores in the soil. As well as other stuff somewhat. Sand can be a 5 CEC, or lower. Clay is often in the 20s or higher. I have some peat ground that is in the high 30s for CEC.

The trick for me is rolling hills, and these soils will change 3 different times in one pass over a field. There is nothing uniform or equal on a whole field! That is why the grid sampling, breaking the fields down into small patches and treating them separately, helps me out so much. It's not 'cheaper' but is is so much better......

Paul

We never have enough but the guys that haul chicken manure in every year run into this issue. Have to test. Most of the ground next to the barns can't take anymore so they are trucking manure farther.

We raise chickens and have plenty of manure, about 600 tons annually.
We use around 200 ton on our farm and sell the rest, test shows a ton of our chicken litter is equal to 200 lbs of 19-19-19 fertilizer.
Depending on the use of the ground and crops raised determines how much N,P,K is taken up and redeposited.
On hay ground everything is taken off and nothing returned, there forth everything is needed making chicken litter very beneficial to hay ground.
Crop land has different up takes depending on the crop raised, also the crop residue returning to the ground helps replace some of the phosphorus taken out, with continued use of chicken litter P levels will get high enough that a fertilize mix of K and N will be needed to regain a proper balance.
On pasture ground much of the P is returned in the cow manure and a few applications of chicken litter will cause high P levels, at that point it will take several applications of K and N only fertilizer to regain the proper balance.

Because we primarily use chicken litter we soil test every year in order to maintain ph levels and prevent high P.

Before going to chicken litter we applied 250 lbs of 19-19-19 per acre on hay ground, is got us 4 1/2 to 5 4x5 round bales per acre, cost was the stopping point on the amount applied and soil test normally showed below average but not poor.
Now we applying 2 to 3 tons of chicken litter per acre on hay ground, this gets us 7 to 8 4x5 bales per acre with soil test showing above average but not to high.
We're not big crop farmers and rotate crop ground into hay ground every five years, there forth I don't have a confirmed number for high P on crop land.

I add year old compost to garden. Neighbor has big tractor with tiller. This year I added 12 yards of compost and 12 yards of yellow sand. Bought soil test kit to remove guess work on N, p, K and PH. Still some guessing because it takes time for best results. Adding lime takes time.

Wish you were my neighbor!

Commercial fertilizer is a great way to balance the soil, but manure is a better base product with all the micros and a bit of organic matter.

I can see 3-4 hog barns (the big 1000 head operations) from my yard, but still not close enough, the manure gets used up before it gets to my
place.

Paul

Yea we use sawdust for bedding, it adds a lot of organic matter back to the ground.
Those hog guys must have more land than me, wish I could afford more land.

john in la
Depending on the size of your garden and what type of manure your applying, it shouldn't take more than a few hundred lbs scattered out and tilled in, it takes a little longer but a cup full between seed hills will be plenty for the plants and you won't be fertilizing the weeds between the rolls.

For my melons I like to dig holes with post hole diggers about 8" deep, put in 6" of litter, cover with a inch or more dirt, plant my sprouts I started in seed trays and cover the roots with more soil, add a little water and watch them grow.
Store bought melons just don't have the flavor of home grown.


John

Thank you Paul, that is an intelligent, well stated summary on the application of manure. Especially helpful was your ability to make the information applicable to me here in Pa and others with different soils than yours. I immediately copied and saved for future reference.
Jim B

Alpaca manure is very good also.

Ratios need to be considered in comparison to what the individual crop needs. Adding 13-13-13 doesn"t address the crop needs, it just increases total nutrients available, in the same ratio as before fertilization. That"s why soil tests need to be balanced with crop needs. Thus the positive response to grid sampling. Applicator trucks actually change auger speeds on the three different compartments (N-P-K) as they drive across the field, in response to the GPS unit knowing which grid they are on, and what that grid requires.