How to apply manure? Top dressing (meaning just spreading around the garden on top of the soil around the plants) is fine. Top dressing with composted manure (which is typically what gets sold in those bags) is a fine thing to do for your garden as a general matter.

Manure, however, will not help at all with the pill/sow bug problem. In any event, I question whether those bugs are, in fact, your problem. In my experience, while those bugs will do so damage to small seedlings, they really don't do much to bigger plants. You are probably seeing slug or earwig damage. Take a closer look at see if you can figure out what is actually causing the damage.

Given that all animal manures have disease pathogens in them you need to ask your self if you want to expose yourself and your family to that potential. The strong suggestions I see from many knowledgeable sources is that manures should not be spread on vegetable gardens sooner than 90 to 120 days before harvest, longer if root crops and low growing leafy vegetables are grown.
Even well aged or composted manures if simply left on the soils surface will loose valuable nutrients so any manure application should be tilled into the soil as soon as possible after being spread.

Preppyjock,
Actually, the guidelines for FRESH manure is not to apply within 120 days of harvest if the veggie comes in contact with the soil ( such as root veggies ) or 90 day's if the veggie does not come in contact with the soil. If you are using the composted stuff from Home Depot, this is not a concern for you. The guidelines are only required for FRESH manure.
Nevertheless, neither will do much for your bug issues. Are you sure they are pill bugs? How big are the plants? What does the damage look like! These are important bits of info needed to determine what to do.

Ron
The Garden Guy
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yea, i have taken some pics of evil pillbugs eating my live plant. and after 2 days, that whole plant is gone! evil! i squeeze them in my fingers everytime i see them. or threw them to the street.

anyway, i bought 1 cubic feet manure yesterday, spread them all over the place. it seems that those bugs don't like it.

i asked this question, because i wasn't sure if it is ok to put them directly on the soil.

Here is a link that might be useful: pictures of pill bugs eating live plant!

"Given that all animal manures have disease pathogens in them..."

"All Irish are Catholic".

"Jews have big noses".

This is the beginning of a LONG list

f we're so worried about manure pathogens in the garden, we better find out some way to keep all the birds, rabbits and other wilflife out, or put little diapers on them! :-)

Ron
The Garden Guy
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When you guys can't find something wrong, then you find something mean to say about the correct things. Appalling.

I don't think you can smother pill bugs to death under manure. They eat manure. I finally got control of all my bugs by stopping the use of all chemicals and using only organic fertilizers (not compost or manure). Suddenly (not really) I had toads in the garden. Once you get toads, you have it made. They eat the insects, slugs, and snails.

"Because of the potential on diseases from manure putting fresh, or even aged, manure on your garden beds is never a good idea,"

"If manure is added directly to soil there should be a minimum of 6 months between application and planting"

"All of the Ag schools today recommend that animal manures be aged 12 months before being applied to the food garden 90 to 120 days before harvest"

"If manure is applied to a garden then the best thing to do is grow plants that will grow quite high for some years before planting any lower growing crops and especially any root crops."

"Farmers have spread manures on their fields for eons, and many home gardeners have seen that and thought they could also do that without realizing the crop rotation the farmer used. No knowledable farmer would grow any food for human consumption on a field that was fertilized in two or three years previously."

I find it more humorous than appalling myself. All the quotes above are from the same person, what exactly was the "correct things" you were referring to David?

Lloyd

I use manure.
Got toads out the wazoo.