Manure provides essential nutrients for good garden soil

Many people are under the erroneous impression that you must havea good supply of manure to be able to grow ravishing roses, terrifictomatoes, and succulent strawberries. Some people even go so far asto keep cows, rabbits, chickens, or other farm animals mostly for themanure they can supply for the garden. Other people drive out tolocal farms for manure or buy manure packaged in plastic bags.

Manure makes good garden soil by providing nutrients, especiallynitrogen, and bulk. You could get the nutrients more easily, however,from a bag of fertilizer because manure is not nearly as high innutrients as bagged fertilizer.

What about that free fertilizer you get if you keep farm animals?The nutrients from such animals are determined by what you feed them.And because the animal must grow and run around, fewer nutrients comeout than went in. Plants would get more of the nutrients if theanimal feed was applied directly to the soil.

The other valuable part of the manure, the bulk, comes mostly fromwhatever bedding material is thrown on the ground beneath the animalto provide soft footing and absorb the manure and urine. Thatbedding, usually hay or wood shavings, is mostly cellulose. Cellulosefluffs up soils, helps hold moisture and feeds soil microorganisms.

But you do not need an animal to get the benefit from beddingeither. As with the animal feed, you could just use the beddingdirectly in the garden, bypassing the animal, with the same benefit.

That bulk is the most valuable component of the manure. After all,you can pick up a bag of fertilizer at a supermarket or drug store,but where do you get a truckload of cellulose? Search around a bit:leaves, wood chips, sawdust, and straw are also mostly cellulose,good for bulk, and often free for the hauling.

So although manure is not a necessity for a good garden, it isnonetheless a valuable material for its bulk and nutrients. But ifyou cannot get your hands or shovel on a supply, use straw, woodchips or any of the other bulky materials mentioned, either diggingthem into your soil, laying them on top of the ground as mulch ormaking them into compost. A sprinkling of fertilizer makes theseorganic materials into ersatz manure.

AP