Garden Trek III: The search for Shat

 

   (my apologies for the title - I'm a Trekkie.  Just bought a Spock
shirt, in fact)

   Anyway, today I called numerous places, and visited several large
stores and garden centers in search for "Composted Cow Manure".

   In the past, I've been able to find this stuff everywhere in the
Spring.  Even small hardware stores had bags of it outside the store for
adding to the garden soil.

   Now, they all seem to have bags of "topsoil" instead, or maybe a bag
of humus.  The small garden center where I stopped this afternoon said
they had 40 pound bags of (and I quote) "hummus".  Now I like hummus,
but usually on crackers, and not as a soil amendment.  I'm assuming that
guy doesn't put this on his crackers, hopefully.

   Anyway, I tried Kroger's, Mal-Mart, hardware stores, and none of them
had plain old 100% composted cow manure.  Mal-Mart did have "compost
WITH cow manure", but I wanted the nutrient rich cow manure compost that
I'm used to putting under trees, shrubs and vegetable plants when I put
them in the ground.  I'm a crotchety young gardener who is used to doing
things about the same way as I was taught when I was 3, and I'm
wondering where the poop went.

   Is there a national shortage of poop that I'm not aware of?  A poop
embargo of some foreign country that gives us more crap than anybody else?

   Ah, if only I had this guy nearby.....
http://www.artpricer.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/elephant-poop.jpg

 

Ohioguy wrote:

When planting trees and bushes and tomato plants, you can always put a
shovelful of the ever-present dog shit into the hole, then cover it up
a bit before you set the plant.

Bob

 



Never use cat, dog, or pig manure in vegetable gardens or compost piles.
Parasites that may be in these types of manure are more likely to
survive and infect people than those in other types of manure. It is
also important to keep your pets out of your vegetable garden.
<http://www.umext.maine.edu/onlinepubs/htmpubs/2510.htm>
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html

 


any manure from an animal that eats meat or will eat meat
(including humans)
can and has kept the e-coli bacteria cycle active.  So, no,
never use this type
of "manure" on your garden(s).  Natural grass eater (cow,
horses, etc)
should never be fed any type of animal by-product as it,
too, can and has
transferred e-coli.  Slaughter houses where making extra $$
at our health
expense.  I do have concerns seeing cow manure mixed with
water and then
used to fertilize fields.  These same fields are utilized as
pasture or for
making hay bales.  So back into the cow it goes.

And e-coli is another reason why everyone should wash their
raw vegtables
bought from a chain store, such as strawberries, lettuce.
It's not hard to
figure out why.

I'm very grateful that I live in a small enough town that
uses not use recycle
human waste.   The larger municipal's state that their water
meets EPA
guidelines for drinking water.  Guidelines are not good
enough for me.
They can make all the claims they want regardings recycling
human waste
products and it's safety, but, nope, I aint a gonna drink
it.

Donna
in WA  zone 8-9
 

 

Lelandite wrote:

You do realize that position is not sustainable?  All water is
recycled waste by now.  The same water gets used over and over again
countless times.  Cow manure has been fertilizing grazing fields for eons.

Bob