I can't think of any reason why you shouldn't. I plan on doing the same thing this winter although I plan on using composted cow manure.

Carole

My worry is that it's too warm out. If 70F is the temp at which organics get active, the temp affecting manure under mulch on sunny fall days could also be that magical 70. And I don't want my roses putting on more growth right now (some are, in spite of dryness).
I've got some vineyard must I plan to use, but it's not going down until the roses slow themselves (which is early Decemeber, even in years when we've had no rose bud killing freezes by then.)

I have a sort of subordinate, follow-up question along these lines.

I will be planting a number of (various types of) roses in the spring. I've already dug out the sites, putting in a couple of bags of top soil along with that there already. My thought was to dig in a half bag of composted manure in each this fall, cover with compost, and then do the spring plantings?

Do you see any problem with this procedure? Are there some rose types (apart from rugosas, which I won't be getting in the spring) that won't require the manure?

I also share Anns concerns about adding manure now. I always wait to spread the layers of (aged/composted cow and horse manure) until the roses have gone dormant (here meaning they have lost most of their leaves). This is about mid November here. In mild winters adding the manure too early may cause the roses to put out new growth, that will be damaged by frost when the real winter weather comes.

Geo: It sounds like a good idea to me to use the composted manure and compost to improve the soil before planting the roses. Just mix the composted manure well with the soil. I do not recommend mixing it in deeper than 1 feet, that will be a waste since the it takes oxygen for the microorganisms to decompose the organic material.

thanks folks....I guess I justed wanted to hear from you that I should procrastinate..hehehehe...

I wasn't able to get the mulch today, so it may be awhile before I get the opportunity to do this anyhow.

Robert

geo_7a, as a card carrying member of the lazy slut school of gardening, I recommend simply laying your organics on top of the soil and letting the little guys do the work for you. Cultivation is waayy out of fashion these days. Since you already dug once, save your back for when you're an old cuss like me, do less, and prove to yourself that those micro-organisms really are hard at work. I don't think there's any magic for micro-organisms at 70 degrees, by the way.

What is vineyard must?

Thank you,
Carla

Must is the leftovers after the wine is squeezed out of the fermented grapes.

Thanks for the recommendations-this is going to be my winter project (thought I could handle manure application better, then).

I was going to add leaf compost, but didn't want to dig it in and disturb the roots of annuals I have still blooming under the roses.

Can I get wait until the frost, and then just spread the compost on the ground and cover it with some mulch? Or am I misunderstanding what I am reading above?

I do mushroom compost and no mulch. I allow it to be the mulch, do it about Thanksgiving here (maybe Hallowe'en there) and refill the beds with cotton gin trash in January if I can get it.

patricia, where do you get mushroom compost?

Nova, yes you can do that. Good plan.

It may not help Robert, but mushroom farms sell their mulch/compost by the truckload.
My local source (about 50 miles away) will deliver dumptruck loads. And they heat it after mushrooming it so that seeds are dead.
Check your county agent to see if there's a mushroom farm within four or five counties.
They've got to get rid of the stuff somehow and generally sell it in bulk.

thanks..will do

R. I am sorry about the late return. I get it at a place in my area "Froggy Bottom." It really was just one of those natural things that happened here. Someone took advantage of it. IT is delivered in lots of 11 yards or 22 yards. I get 11fall/11spring, so 22yards per year and add to that the cottongin trash from the cotton gin and horse manure from the stalls, and that's about all I use. If it is composted well, it makes a pretty top dressing, no mulch needed.

and gives a little history of how some villages/towns, etc., got their names in our area. Reading it could make you smile.

SMUTEYE - Major Cox squinted in the sun as he looked at the weathered, frame structure with the faded red-and-white Coca-Cola sign bearing the name Smuteye Grocery.

What's in a Name collage

The old sign bears the name of the community, one of a dozen or more Alabama places with strange names and rich folklore on how they got their names. The names range from Possum Trot to Bug Tussle to Santuck.

"This old store was the center of things - where men would sit around and drink beer and smoke cigarettes and tell lies," Cox said.

And they did the same thing a century earlier just across the road at a blacksmith shop where the name, "Smuteye," was forged from fire and steel and a homemade ale that the local women called the devil's brew, he said.

Cox, who has a farm near this Bullock County town, I said the blacksmith's shop became quite a gathering place for men to talk and drink. The area used to be called Welcome.

"The men folk would stand around the fire in the winter time and drink moonshine," Cox said.

As the story goes, staying close to the fire left their faces smudged with smut, covering everything except their eyes.

"When they got home, their wives would take one look at their smutty faces and know where they had been," Cox said. "The women came to call the blacksmith shop "Smuteye," and soon folks called the community "Smuteye," he said.

Other small towns dot the landscape with quaint, often confusing names. On the other side of Lake Jordan in Central Elmore County is the community of Santuck.

"I have heard two versions of how Santuck got its name," said Eunice Johnson, a Santuck resident and treasurer of the Santuck Flea Market.

According to one story, it was named for two families that settled the area - the Sanders family and the Tucker family, she said. The other story goes that "wagons would get stuck in the sandy roads," Johnson said. Folks began to call the area Sand Stuck, and later simply Santuck, she said.

The name of a person remains today in many communities. Blue's Old Stand, a few miles to the west of Smuteye, was named for a roadside stand run by a man named Blue in the 19th century.

Folks on their way to Montgomery would stop there "to water their horse and buy a charge of hay," Cox said.

Over the years, the stand became a landmark, and people began to call that community Blue's Old Stand, he said.

South of Slapout is Ceasarville. "Ceasarville was named for a blacksmith whose name was Ceasar," said Mary Bass Belmont, a Ceasarville businesswoman and owner of Mary's Dirt Co.

Ceasar had been a slave on a Slapout plantation owned by her ancestor, Elisha Milton Cain, who came to the area from North Carolina in 1814 as a soldier with Gen. Andrew Jackson, Belmont said.

Union Springs, the county seat of Bullock County, got its name for the many springs that early settlers found there in the 19th century, said Barbara McLaurine, tourism coordinator for the Union Springs/Bullock County Tourism Council.

Animals - even the lowly opossum - lend their names to communities.

North of Slapout is Possum Trot. "I expect Possum Trot got its name because its where some folks saw some Opossums crossing the road," said Leon Jackson Jr. of Slapout.

Possum Bend, a Wilcox County community on the Alabama River, was named by Jerimiah Austell, a riverboat pilot in the 19th century, according to Joyce Wall, member of the Pine Apple Town Council. Pine Apple is also in Wilcox County.

"The riverboat pilot would get off the boat at Burford Landing and visit his girlfriend," Wall said. The following morning he would walk to the next landing and catch the riverboat, she said. "On his way to the next landing, he saw a lot of possums near the bend of the river, and he named that area Possum Bend."

Flea Hop got its name in the early 1900s for the fleas that would hop on folks from the goats that a man kept there, said Dorothy Baughman, who lives on Flea Hop Road in Elmore County.

Frog Level, a community on Wetumpka's western outskirts in Elmore County, got its name as "it', just a low boggy area" where lots of frogs can be heard there in a flood plain of the Coosa, said Jan ice Whorton, Wetumpka's economic development coordinator.

In east Montgomery County, the small community of Froggy Bottom was named in the early 1900s because it's a wetland area and frogs could be heard croaking, said B.J. Shaver, president of Froggy Bottom Materials Inc.

"Froggy Bottom was an old gravel pit and it was a lovers' lane," Shaver said. "It was a place where people would go to park. And it was also the end of the paved road when you drove out Ware Road."

Alcohol apparently was the contributing factor in yet another community name. Bug Tussle in Cullman County was previously named Wilburn, said Dan Fulenwider of Cullman.

"The legend is that it was around 1912 when it became Bug Tussle," Fulenwider said. "There was a fellow named Charlie Campbell who was well known for his love of white lightning."

And one day while drinking the homemade brew, Campbell sat alongside the road to rest, Fulenwider said.

"He got interested in watching two tumble bugs trying to roll a ball of dirt across the road," Fulenwider said. Campbell told folks the bugs appeared to be tussling. Thus, area residents started calling the community Bug Tussle.

Neither bugs nor homebrew influenced the naming of an Elmore County community - Slapout.

"There was a country store up here about the 1920s and whenever the owner was out of something that his customers asked for, he would say, "I'm slap out,"' said Dianne Fowler, the grocery manager at the Boys Store on Alabama 111 in Slapout near Lake Jordan.

Folks started calling that area adjacent to Holtville - Slapout, she said.

A little farther eastward is the town of Eclectic.

Baughman, who lives on Flea Hop Road, said Dr. Thomas Fielder, a local physician named it in the 1840s after a course, "the eclectic course of study," he had taken at medical school.

Names given by Alabama's first settlers are common.

Tallassee, a city in east Elmore County and west Tallapoosa County, got its name for the Creek Indian settlement of the same name that was there in the early 1800s, said Tallassee Mayor Bobby Payne.

Tallassee is the Creek word for Old Town, Payne said.

Wetumpka, the county seat of Elmore County, was incorporated in 1834 and named for the Creek Indian expression, "Rumbling Waters," as it is on the Coosa River where boulders create rapids, said Whorton, the town's economic development coordinator.

And some names came straight from nature.

Pine Apple in Wilcox County was named for a pine tree and an apple tree, said Pine Apple Town Councilwoman Wall.

"There was a pine tree and an apple tree at the old stagecoach stop here in the 1800s," Wall said. "It became known as the stop at the pine and the apple and eventually just Pine Apple.

And of course, the Whistle Stop Cafe near Birmingham, famous for "Fried Green Tomatoes," before they were a movie.

As a recent graduate of LSSOG, I get all my composted manure and mushroom compost from Home Depot in bags.

I tell you, they don't name towns like the used to. I'd give anything (short of moving) to have a post office address in Smuteye.

my $.02--way too early(or late) for manure or other nitrogen; and in this zone (6b) too early by a month or so for mulching your HTs. If you are not growing hts, why mulch at all before spring? In march in va, late march here, do your layer of nitro plus layer of mulch. And stand back.
j

ps--careful with the mushroom soil/chicken poop. It can whack out your soil pH--pushes it to the sweet side. Not a worry if your soil is very acidic; but can be an issue if you are neutral to slightly sweet. If latter is you, mix it with pine fines (an acidic mulch) to balance. I'll bet you can get pine fines bulk in VA.

I've got about 2 acres of gardens with over 500 roses....and, I do this by myself, so I can't physically get it all done in the spring as I also have a job and coach tennis in the spring...so, I need to do what I can when I can....that's why I can't wait...

Robert, I know what you mean about wanting to get as much done as possible in the fall vs. waiting to do it all in the spring. I also try to do all my mulching and as much soil improvement in the fall, because I am so busy in the spring with other things (+ a multitude of garden chores and baby seedlings in the greenhouse).

I wouldn't have any problem with putting down manure right now as long as it was composted. The fresh stuff would act as a high N fertilizer, esp. rabbit and chicken. I had two rabbits and would apply their fresh manure all throughout the growing season, and it was sort of a fast-acting fertilizer. I never put it on fresh in the fall. But composted would be fine if that is what you have.

Sometimes in the fall I get composted cow manure from the dairy farm and apply that. I always apply new mulch (shredded leaves) on top of everything in the fall.