"David Hare-Scott" wrote in
:

Dee wrote:
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in
u:

I wonder how many people here have ever killed anything with any
sort of fertiliser? I know I haven't.

Anyone want to put up their hand and tell us if you have and if
you did, what did you do?


I didn't, but my next-door neighbor did.

One spring we both went to a horse farm and loaded up our small
pickup beds with manure. The manure was maybe 1-3 months old (my
best guess - I used to work with horses).

I spread the manure in my veggie garden, keeping it at least 8
inches away from the base of any plant. Most of it went around
the edges and in the paths of the garden. I then covered the
paths with fresh straw so I wouldn't be walking in manure. That
summer (and the following summer) I had the biggest, healthiest
plants ever, giving the most prolific yields ever, and the
produce was the best and tastiest that I ever received out of
that garden.


Sounds right.

Meanwhile, my neighbor, using the same manure forked from the
same pile, spread it at the base of all his plants. In another
part of his garden where he had not yet planted anything, he
tilled the manure into the soil and then a week or so later put
in more plants. That summer he lost more than half the garden.
The plants growing in the tilled area died first, rather quickly,
within a month or so. The plants that had manure at their base
struggled the entire summer to live, either producing very little
or nothing, and then died a long drawn-out death.

Dee

This is entirely at odds with my experience. I cannot picture 1-3
month old horse manure doing this. Once it has rotted for a few
months you can plant straight into it, I have a very vigorous
self-seeded pumpkin growing in the manure pile right now. I would
say the neighbour added something else (like a chemfert) and
didn't tell you.

David

I could not imagine that he added chemferts. He is *very* (as in,
*extremely*) organic. He has gardened organically for over 30 years.

I think it's more likely that I was probably wrong about how aged the
manure was. It had broken down very little in the pile, and we were
forking from the top (therefore from more recent additions).
Apparently the manure was fresh enough to burn and kill the roots of
new transplants.

Dee