What Manure is Best? (part 2)

Horse, cow, rabbit, sheep, goat, hog, duck, chicken, turkey, etc. What's the best value for money? In this two-part series I show how answering this question is not as simple as one might think!

Last week, in working through the answering of the question of what manure is best, I arrived at the following general conclusions:

• the closest and cheapest manure is ALWAYS the best choice since all manures are generally good for the soil;

• buying in bulk (e.g. by the cubic yard) is always a better deal than buying in bags;

• aged manure is always preferable to fresh manure, because it is more dense, will have more available nutrients; will have fewer pathogens; and it will (generally) have less viable weed seeds; and,

• while manure from animals with gizzards like chickens and ducks tends to have very few weeds, for most other manures, it’s practically futile to seek out weed-less manure.

When I have used manure in my garden, it has been horse manure 95% of the time. There’s ways to deal with the weeds - it’s not worth worrying about!

Those were the general points, but now it’s time to get into the numbers, because all manures are not created equally. The table below shows all the major forms of agricultural manures in terms of their nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) content in KG per tonne.