Organic Solutions: Manure, Compost, Rhizobia, CO2 Sequestering

Question from Mary:
Shortly after visiting your web site, I ordered your book. When it arrives, I know I will so enjoy reading it from cover to cover. I am delighted over the serendipitous connections, like with the McEvoys, as well!

I am so very sorry to hear of your riding accident that left you physically compromised, and especially after having been obviously very active out of doors! That must be hard. One consolation is the many people you have helped through your blog that perhaps you would not have had time to help, had you been gardening. I know the latter typically takes all my time from sunrise to sunset.

My partner recently read your article on compost, by the way. We have been wanting to make our own (we import OMRI-certified from local vendors, 15 yards at a time). We have a lot of weed piles, but were stymied by the problem of finding a recommended, affordable, safe, and effective chopper/shredder machine. Your solution to just machete it was a good one that we intend to try. Though I saw a hand-crank shredder recently–in the great permaculturist Geoff Lawton’s video on soils–that intrigued me.

I went to Bancroft Junior High while my sister went to Hollywood High. But after that year, my mother was disillusioned with the public school system (as were we, despite making great lifelong friends at both institutions) and we were sent to an “experimental” high school in the San Fernando Valley based on the principles of Summerhill and other innovative education experiments–this was the late sixties–the heyday of hope, progress, and experimentation on a societal level.

It sounds like your parents were innovators too, open to what must have been at the time the radical ideas of Albert Howard and Rodale. I also think you were blessed with that early farming experience that helped establish your amazing connection with growing things at an early age!

I am so glad you strongly corroborate my nascent impressions of chicken manure! The reason I tried it is that I noticed after cleaning out one of our barn owl nesting boxes, the ground cover in the area under it, where all the waste had fallen, grew at least five times as big and a deeper, richer green than anywhere else in the field. I went on a mission to see what I could get that was kin to barn owl manure. I ended up trying bat guano and chicken manure, the latter being easier to apply, the best results, and cheaper to boot!

Thank you so much for the tips on the horse manure and alfalfa, when to apply, etc. You mention the horse manure must be “clean” (salt-free)–how do you ascertain that? We have many stables in this rural part of West Sonoma County who give away horse manure if you pick it up. We made a compost out of manure and rice straw the first year after we bought the land, but have not done it since. This is because I had heard from several sources that horse was not the best choice in manures. However, I see it can be boosted with alfalfa, and that another useful property is that it can be applied year-round. My tetanus shot still has another 3–4 years to go! Thanks for the concern!

Here’s one for you: Have you heard about the University of OR study of coffee grounds–supposedly as rich in N and effective as cow manure, without the pathogens? We have started getting organic grounds from a local cafe to see for ourselves.

I have read a couple of articles about the charcoal-making of older civilzations. I want to understand it better and read more. There is another Aussie permaculturist who does deep, thin-lined plowing of pasture land on a very large scale, innoculating the soil 2.5 feet deep with good bacteria and fungi, which he says, if done on a vast scale, will counteract global warming by absorbing CO2. Not totally sure how this works, even though I have viewed seven of his 21 or so videos on the subject! My guess is that ground-cover roots can grow deeper and better with the innoculant applied that deeply, and therefore absorb and sequester more carbon (???)… Any thoughts?

Answer from Pat:
You are certainly a devoted organic gardener. Thank you for this informative email including many facts of help to other organic gardeners, and thanks for ordering my book!

A few quick answers to your queries: You asked how to find salt-free horse manure. Of course, there will always be some salt in any manure or urine of humans or animals. But what I meant was manure that is largely free of salt from salt licks. My experience is that good horse owners “muck out” their stables and corrals daily. That is, every day they go around with a pitch fork and wheelbarrow and scoop up all manure. This is the sort of horse owner or stable you want to find. Don’t get the manure from a messy, badly kept barnyard or corral. One reason sheep manure and goat manure are fine to use is because this is usually clean manure simply because of the way the animals are kept, usually on pasture. And by the way, I’m sure you know not to used pig manure because it contains dangerous pathogens. We didn’t know that on our farm in Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, we used it on the fields not on the vegetables, simply because of the smell.

Mares drop their manure wherever, but stallions and pride-cut geldings stack it neatly in a corner. When a horse owner or stable owner doesn’t care, the animals begin not to care either and kick the manure around and bits of salt may get into it and lots of bedding may get mixed into it too. The same thing happens when steer, cows, and other cattle are kept in a feed lot. It’s a horrendous situation and usually there are chunks of salt getting mixed into steer manure, and sometimes you can see it in dry bagged manure.

When getting horse manure, it’s okay to include the bedding (sawdust or straw) and to include it also when spreading manure like mulch on top of the ground, since the sawdust particularly contains the urine which is a strong source of nitrogen, it’s good to use, but then one cannot combine it with the garden soil without letting it age because it won’t be fully rotted. This, in my opinion, is why we are told to age manures in manure piles, when actually it’s fine to spread it fresh and let rain wash the goodness into the ground. The reason for the aging caveat is that folks might dig fresh manure into the ground and that is a no-no for several reasons: Fresh manure can burn roots and un-rotted bedding will subtract nitrogen from the soil in order to rot. But an Extension Advisor in Ohio wrote an article that I once came across on the Internet that agreed with me. His point was why should we waste all that good nitrogen pouring down into the ground under a manure pile for three months and incidentally causing runoff into the ground water, when you could have been aging it along on top of the ground surrounding plants so that the nitrogen, which he pointed out mainly came from urine, could be going down into the ground to feed plants, not just to be wasted while actually harming the environment.

Thank you for mentioning the Oregon University study on coffee grounds http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/node/1009

. I had not heard of but at my talks recently several folks have asked about them. I usually suggest using them and tea leaves also on acid-loving plants, now I know since reading this article that they are not acid, but neutral. Also, they are not a source of nitrogen, nor are they fully rotted, of course, so it’s best not to dig them into the ground unless you add plenty of nitrogen. The article suggests using them as a nitrogenous waste in the compost pile but they cannot be considered a nitrogen fertilizer.

Regarding sequestering CO2, I find it a little difficult to understand also, since after all none of these methods allow one to grab carbon dioxide or methane from the atmosphere and stick it into the ground. The only good it does as far as I can see is to prevent a current or future source of carbon dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere, such as the methane in coffee grounds, for example, which would be released from a dump if they go to a dump.

Regarding rhizobia and inoculants in soil and for plant health, I am totally convinced of their benefits. Deep plowing, however, is today a controversial subject. Some experts believe in such practices as double digging and deep plowing. Others believe in shallow plowing or even no digging at all. Many experts now feel it is unwise to disturb the natural mechanisms that exist in the ground which can create a web of beneficial bacteria, rhizobia, fungi, and other organisms out of sight in the soil and that one should not disturb the soil horizons either. I believe that the lasanga or Ruth Stout no dig method of gardening is a perfectly workable system, but that it works better in a wet climate than a dry one, which does not mean it can’t be done. In fact, I have included basic instructions in the latest edition of my book, the one you are getting. But basically I am still of the old school that digs up or plows the ground and adds organic amendments of various types to enrich the soil. Also, European earthworms are most likely not a good thing out in nature where they destroy leaf cover, but fine on farms and in gardens where they help to combine organics with the soil. They are especially helpful in sandy soils.