An interesting read from Garden Wise: Sustainable Gardening
A guide to choosing the right manure for your garden
Each spring gardeners load their soil up with composts and manures. But of the many products available, which is best for your garden and its specific needs? Use this quick reference to help decide what to add to your garden.
Purchase manure and compost that is well aged and preferably screened. Good-quality products are composted at high temperatures, ensuring they won't burn plants and will be free of diseases and viable weed seeds.
Steer manure (.7-.3-.4): Its claim to fame is improving the structure of the soil. Suitable for all applications in the garden, steer manure is a "cool" manure, meaning it releases heat and nitrogen slowly and therefore there is little chance of it burning the plants. Excellent for shallow-rooted plants such as azaleas, rhodos, and camellias.
Mushroom compost (2-0.4-2.4): Rich in organic matter, this manure has been used for growing mushrooms. As it is more on the neutral side, keep it away from any acid-loving plants. Use in the vegetable garden and on roses, lavender, clematis and rosemary.
Chicken manure (1.1-.8-.5): This has the highest nutrients of any manure. Use in vegetable gardens, annual containers and as an annual top-dressing for the lawn. To prevent burning plant roots, ensure it has been composted for a minimum of one year, keeping it covered with plastic to prevent leaching of the valuable nutrients. Apply it lightly around shallow-rooted plants.
Fish compost (1.7-1.5-6): Available at garden centres, this can be used as a soil amendment or mulch. Slightly acidic and full of trace elements, micronutrients and minerals, it is excellent for blueberries and rhododendrons.
Worm castings (3.2-1.1-1.5): These fertile castings contain vital nutrients and are an excellent way to increase the water-holding capacity of the soil. It's great in the vegetable garden, and you can add some to the compost to make it more nutritious and break down faster.
Rabbit manure (2.5-1.5-.5): This is high in nitrogen and phosphorus, encouraging healthy foliage, strong roots and plentiful flowers. Use in all areas of the garden.
Llama manure (1.8-.5-1.6): According to David Tarrant, many gardeners consider the finest manure for the garden to be that of the llama. It has a fine texture, and its natural "pelleted" form aids in its slow release, reducing any chance of burning to garden plants. It has loads of trace elements and minerals, as well as plenty of nitrogen and potassium. Add to the garden, compost or use to create a garden tea. Special thanks to David for this tip!
The rule for using composts or manures is to add 1 part to every 2 or 3 parts of your soil when digging a planting hole or garden. Never apply mulch more than 5 cm (2 in.) deep.
Where growing carrots, turnips, parsnips or similar root vegetables, reduce the amount of manure to 1 part manure to every 6 parts existing garden soil; this will discourage "hairy" roots.
Read more: http://www.gardenwiseonline.ca/gw/sustainable-gardening/2006/03/01/manures-best-one-job#ixzz0k8RUvJgB
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Here at the Royal Ranch it is only natural for us to live as "green" of a life as we possibly can. Our ranch sits at the bases of beautiful Mts. Rosalie and Logan, outside of Bailey Colorado. The elevation at the ranch is almost 9,000 feet and the Royal Roost, our B&B, sits at about 9,200. The air is clean and crisp and the scenery is breathtaking! Tom and I are both from this area, and feel strongly rooted to it's history, the spectacular forests that we grew up in, and the plants and animals that reside in our amazing mountains.
On this page we will share various articles that Judy has written or found interesting to green enthusiasts, blurbs from Naked~Nure's online reviews and green living tips. We enjoy sharing our knowledge and experiences, and possibly teach people something new in the process! Please visit this page often, I always have something new to say...
Here is an article I wrote for my blog Royal Ranch, Green from the "Bottom" Up! about Hummingbirds:
The most coomon hummingbirds in our wondeful part of Colorado are the Ruby-throated and the Rufous, but there are as many as 300 types. Hummingbirds are only native to the Americas and migrate up to 2,000 miles. Ruby-throated hummers have to cross the Gulf of Mexico on a non-stop flight, that is 500 miles! They can fly 60/mph in a dive, and are the only birds that can fly backwards and even upside down. Giant hummingbirds wings beat 8-10 times per second, with small birds at an amazing 20-25 beats per second, and up to 100 beats for their spectacular courtship flight.
The metabolism of a hummingbird is about 100 times faster than an elephant's, aside from insects they have the highest metabolism of all animals. Hummingbirds will consume 5 times their body weight, about equal to a penny, in nectar each day. All the while benefitting the 1,000 flowers they visit by pollinating them, rubbing their faces and heads on the "tube" of the flower. Hummers also eat insects and spiders for protein. This magical little creature can also go into a state called torpor, which brings their metabolic rate down 1/15 when food is not readily available (like at night).
Females nest and raise the young on their own, she makes an expandable nest out of spider webbing so it will grow with her young'uns. Two white eggs take 18-19 days to hatch and the hatchlings are ready to leave in 3 weeks. Mama bird has only one brood per year and many young hummingbirds don't survive more than a year or so. The life expectancy of a hummingbird is 3-5 years, with the oldest bird on record (12 years) being banded and recaught in our great state!
Hummingbirds are very smart and will go back to a reliable source of food again and again. They even know how long it takes for a specific flower to refill before returning to it. Hummers have better sight and hearing than humans with no sense of smell, they choose their flowers by color and shape of tube. As for their own dazzling colors, they are able to show or hide them as they see fit, as these irridescent feathers do not have pigment. It really comes in handy with the ladies or as a method of camouflage.
To successfully feed these wondrous birds, mix a solution of 1 part sugar to 4 parts water, bring to a boil and cool. It is usually best to have at least a couple of feeders, preferably out of site from one another, so one aggressive male does not stake his claim and not let the others feed. These little guys are very territorial, spreading their tail feathers and neck feathers (the gorget) in a flash of color, diving and chasing off any new comers.
To solve the problem of insects getting in your feeders, try 3 parts sugar to one part water in a separate feeder that will attract the bugs and won't hurt the hummers. Homemade food is much better (as usual) for the hummingbirds as many prepared nectar products have preservatives, dyes and artifical flavors in them that in a lab setting have shown to shorten the lives of the birds.
Hummingbirds are said to have the protective spirit of an eagle, prompting my tattoo. After the shooting at our high school I got it as a way to express my extraordinarily strong protectiveness of "our" kids, and especially my own. My new best friend, as the kids called him, could simply go from my shoulder to theirs; that way we could always keep an eye on each other! I am really excited to share these pics of my favorite birds. As you can imagine they are very difficult to photograph, but I got quite a few shots one night as they buzzed back and forth to my feeders. This guy is the dominant male and always comes back to this perch to keep an eye on his feeder. Although they are not museum quality -ha, the hour kneeling in the rose bushes was worth it!
And, this is an article about this wonderful product!
Green from the "bottom" up. What exactly does that mean? Well, it is a play on words; our business is manure, so the "bottom" is quite involved in our work. We also consider all of our products very eco-friendly, so we have worked to be green from the "bottom" up! Today I would like to give you all a quick lesson on our llama manure and how this product came to be, I also plan on giving you some interesting ideas.
Manure is a very valuable resource that should not be left "behind" (I just "crack" myself up!!!). Not only is it a fantastic fertilizer, but it is a wonderful soil conditioner. Besides being extraordinarily high in the N-P-K nutrients commonly known, it leeches calcium, magnesium and sulfur into the soils. These nutrients are great for soil fertility and quality. Manure also increases water retention by adding organic material which helps reduce compaction of soil. If your soil has extreme pH levels, try manure, it is a great all natural way of creating balance.
Now, let's take a look at various manures and their N-P-K levels:
- Bat Guano 6.0 9.0 3.0
- Llama 1.8 .5 1.6
- Chicken(dry) 1.6 1.8 2.0
- Sheep .7 .3 .4
- Horse .6 .3 .5
- Cow .6 .4 .5
- Rabbit 2.4 1.4 .6
So, unless you plan on climbing into bat caves (or paying big bucks), chicken, rabbit and llama manure are the highest in nutrients that a consumer can find. Any manure that is in a pellet form has additional benefits though. It is usually lower in organic matter which will help not burn your plants, but the pellet itself acts as an aeration tool. Many manures need to be dried for at least six months, preferably at 150* or more so they will not burn the roots of plants and do not pass along any weed seeds that the manure may contain.
Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), and Potassium (K) levels are usually much higher in commercial fertilizers, but they do not have the added benefits of water retention, soil conditioning and aeration. Many of them also use harsh chemicals that if not used properly can be harmful to the user or the plants. The size of the warning labels on the commercial products have warned me off entirely!
We have used our llama manure since the day that the llamas first arrived almost a decade ago. Up until this season, we used the pellets as soil conditioners and they slowly leeched their nutrients into the very rocky ground, with exceptional results. I have a perennial garden that stands 3-4 feet tall right now, and that is at 9,000 feet in elevation! Earlier in the season I had some plants that I wanted to give a good strong start, so I decided to use a burlap bag that I had from rice and make myself some tea. No, I didn't drink it, but my plants sure drank it up! This got us thinking, we could make llama manure tea bags and share this wonderful by-product of our majestic creatures.
The first idea was similar to my rice bag. It needed to be longer and skinnier to fit properly in my five gallon bucket, we then added a handle for ease of taking it out of the brewed tea. Our next prototype was for smaller watering containers that are used inside. We came up with heat seal, compostable, oversize tea bags that we fill with our precious llama manure. To make sure that there is no packaging, we went back to the good old days of flour sacks, etc. and made any packaging reusable. The indoor tea bags come in a hand sewn fabric bag that also has a handle on it like the burlap bags. Both bags are meant to be rinsed out and reused for tool or bulb storage.
The next step was to come up with a name and logo. This was not very difficult for us as Tom is known to go Naked every now and again and our poo is such great Naked (all natural, no chemicals, etc.) manure, Naked~Nure only made sense. We have gotten hundreds of comments on our hysterical logo, Naked Johnny. I met Naked Johnny (aka Tom) on our tenth wedding anniversary when we climbed Mt. Rosalie. Tom insisted that we hike the last 500 feet or so, naked, needless to say we have some great pictures from that day-Ha! This is the hike that got our llama business started, so it was only appropriate that eight years later when we came up with a new llama idea, that I use the pic of Tom hiking that day many moons ago for our logo. Instead of a walking stick and backpack, Naked Johnny now sports a hat and a shovel of manure!
Tom and I are dedicated to this product and know that it has huge benefits to our customers and good old Mother Earth. We have committed ourselves to never using new materials, unless absolutely needed for quality control, like the burlap. I get all of my material from recycled fabric, the denim is from jeans that are no longer usable and our tags are made of 100% recycled paper. We even ship in reused boxes, this not only helps our overhead, but is very eco-friendly. The manure uses nutrients in the tea, but because of it's pelleted form, then has a second life as a soil amendment. The smaller tea bags can be thrown into the compost pile and will make nutrient rich "gardener's gold".
Yes, this is a shameless plug for my business, but as I mentioned we are very proud of this product and want to take gardening to a "greener" place. I plan on diversifying our little gardening business at some point. I would like to add sheep and rabbit (both of which I am already collecting!) manure maybe, and am collecting seeds for the 2010 growing season. I guess since I'm already plugging, I'll tell you that we are about to run a 50% off sale, to help you prepare your soil for next year and put your gardens to rest, at their very best!
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