OH DEAR,NOT HORSE MANURE!

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In other parts of the garden, I stuck with chicken manure and cow manure for a while, and the deer kept coming. Last year, however, I decided to switch to horse manure as my universal fertilizer. It protected favorite deer foods like corn seedlings and early spring peas and it kept marauding nibblers from blueberry bushes. It protected everything.

To prove the point, I set out several new young azalea bushes early last spring. The only horse manure I had on hand was too fresh to put on the young, tender shrubs, and by the next morning, they were eaten almost to the ground. Later in the year, I moved some azaleas I'd rooted from cuttings. I put on a layer of ground leaves for mulch, then a light layer of aged horse manure and the azaleas have done very well. I've seen deer sniff and nuzzle them, but they have not taken a single nibble.

In our area, as in many areas, riding stables are happy to give folks manure free of charge, so long as they load and haul it away themselves. Some stables will deliver it for a reasonable price. Several friends have horses and I can obtain extra from them when our horse can't provide enough.

For those who don't have local access to riding stables or neighbors with horses, the next time you go for a ride in the country, take along some covered garbage cans (with liners if you prefer and keep on the lookout for horses. I've found that many folks who stable their horses in the winter are delighted to have someone volunteer to haul away the manure in the spring.

My husband makes fun of me when I go out with my garden tractor, trailer in tow, and using a flat shovel as a king sized pooper-scooper gather manure in die pasture. I tell him I'm going on a treasure hunt... for brown gold.

Joyce Tomanek
Clarkesville, Georgia

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print