Everything about manure

Whether from a horse, cow or even chicken - it is the same and I've dealt with it all. Yes...we are talking manure; otherwise known as guano, castings, effluent, droppings or feces.

And I am an expert. To see why, read how I got into hydroponics.

It may be a disagreeable substance to some but to the gardener it is a miracle of nature.

It has been used by gardeners for a very long time to fertilize their plants because it is packed with nitrogen and many necessary trace nutrients that plants need, so the question is how do we get these nutrients from the manure to the plant and...

How does this relate to organic hydroponics?

One method to provide nutrient water to your plants is to make a 'tea' by steeping some organic substance in a mesh bag to extract the nutrients and then watering your plants with this tea. It would appear that manure would be ideal for this method...well it's not!

In fact, making such a tea out of fresh manure will add no nutrient value to your plants at all and will also 'burn' the roots because of it's high acidic level.

Fresh manure (and any fresh organic matter such as fruit rinds or eggshells) contain a lot of plant nutrients but they are bound up in the organic matter and therefore unusable by a plant until the organic matter is composted or rotted, releasing the bound up nutrients.

This is the process by which bacteria break down the organic matter releasing the bound-up nutrients. As a sidenote my contention is that Mittleider experiments in India failed because fresh manure was used as organic fertilizer and burned the roots of the plants severely causing the plants to die.

So my recommendation is to use manure but compost it first or you are in for trouble...

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