MurphOnMillerAve wrote:
You are right, up148. Using it isn't optimal. I have long had (via Cook College @ Rutgers U.) the understanding that the best manure for gardens and crops is horse manure = the "sweetest" (least acidic; least "hot") ;
We really do have some far out drift on these boards. I wouldn't have thought that a thread on tariffs would have morphed into the best fertilizer for the garden, but since I know a little about it and have nothing better to do, let me add my $0.02.
If you're gonna use horse manure for your garden or flower beds, and you purchase it in the raw state, (ie: right out of the stables), the best time to put it on the garden area is in the fall, after you've picked the garden clean. This allows the winter rains and snow to soak through and distribute the nutrients through the soil. Here in western PA., folks all head to the mushroom farms and mines to get the "used" manure, which when tilled in, in the spring, still has plenty of nutrients and also helps to keep the soil loose to promote root growth.
We had a huge Mushroom Mine right close to me in Winfield, Pa., and it was all underground in the limestone mines. Employed hundreds. You may have heard of or seen Moonlight Mushrooms in grocery stores throughout the east. But having worked a short stint in an above ground mushroom farm after graduation and before I left for the Navy, I can briefly explain how horseshit goes from the fresh raw state to "used".
There were 7 "houses" on the farm I worked at. All two story cement block houses hooked together to appear as one like a row house, but each individual house separated by a cement block wall between them. Each house had 7 beds beginning about floor level to within a few feet of the roof. There were two sets of beds on each side of the house. Coming in from the rear side of the house, (the houses were built up against the side of a hill), there was a door in each house level with a large cement pad behind the houses. All of the beds in the houses were made up of loose white oak boards, and all were rolled up toward the outside of the house when not in use, allowing you to stand on the upper catwalk and look down to floor through all the studding which supported the beds. You had a center walkway, and about a 30" wide walkway against each block wall of the house. Here's how it went when you prepped a house for new growth.
Down on the bottom floor, roll out all the boards in the very bottom beds on each side. This creates the "floor" for the bottom of the bed. A long conveyor is brought in off the rear cement pad all the way to the front of the house. The long part of the conveyor is for forward, and at the front of the conveyor is another short one that goes left/right. The raw horse manure is piled on the cement pad out back, and the conveyor gets loaded with a bucket loader. A single operator handles the left/right conveyor shooting the manure out the sides and down to the ground floor bed. We piled it high up to the bottom of where the next bed will be. The conveyor backs up, filling the entire bottom row on each side of the house. Meanwhile, we're rolling out the second bed row of boards for the conveyor to come back in and start the process over again. This goes on until we're up to the 7th and last beds. When all the beds are leveled out and the manure distributed evenly, the house is closed up and the steam is turned on. Steam runs for about a week, keeping the house at 130/140 degrees , and the manure all settles down to about 8" thick, and it turns black and rich. The steams gets turned off the house is allowed to cool, and then by hand, we bring in two gallon buckets of a rich red dirt, about 240 buckets for each level, times 7 levels, and we spread it out by hand completely covering all the manure with a thin coat of dirt. The entire house gets watered, the lights go out, and this forms a crust on the dirt, which we then scratch loose with a big comb, (3 foot section of plaster lath with about 50 finishing nails drove in evenly), and then mushroom spoor is sown, (thrown in by hand), and the beds watered again. The lights go off, and the house goes dark for a few days, and when you go back in, the dirt is growing "cobwebs" from the spoor. No more electric lights 'cept for head lanterns. We scratch it all loose again, (2 more times), and now the entire bed is covered with cobwebs. In a day or two, you'll see a few mushrooms. In a week, thousands of mushrooms, and the ladies come in to pick. (They're wearing miners caps with electric lanterns). They can pick that particular house for 2 weeks or so until there's almost no yield, then they move to another house. And then we begin by bringin' the conveyor back in and unloading the entire house in the reverse order that we loaded it, rolling back the boards on each bed 'til we're on the bottom floor. This manure that comes out of the house is piled up and sold to individuals, truck gardeners, landscaping outfits, and others. And that's the story of horse manure as the best fertilizer.
Hope there's no tariff on it!
If you agree with the Progressives, it's freedom of speech. If you disagree, it's hate speech. There are no alternatives.
