lets define what the goal is.. and then accomplish it..

is your goal to start some seeds??

or????

is your goal to improve your soil???

pick on or the other.. and dont complicate your life by doing both at once ...

one suggestion might be for you to have a seed starting bed.. a nursery bed... if you will .. and grow your seedlings there this spring... while you amend the soil in your other beds ... and then in a month or two.. move your seedlings into your other beds.. by which time your manure will have settled in ....

and when they are all moved.. improve the nursery bed soil in summer.. so its ready for winter sowing or next spring...

whatever you do.. make it easy.. dont make it harder by layering multiple projects on top of each other...

ken

Ah, I tend to sow seed into a lean, low fertile soil and feed or amend the medium only if required. The seeds have all they need within the seed coat and embryo and the cotyledon starts photosynthesis as soon as germination occurs above the soil (some plants germinate below the soil, producing a radicle before a leafy shoot).

I don't direct seed often but when I have I always added some compost to the soil before seeding. I will not use the manure as I was reminded at a Master Gardener event yesterday that manure is high in salt. Thanks for your ideas.

I would dig in as much as 3 inches of manure into raw clay or sand. As an experiment I once sowed corn seed directly into raw clay without even turning the soil. I just mowed the patch and punched holes and dropped a seed into it. You wouldn't believe how terrible the plants and the corn looked. DW wouldn't consider eating the corn.

I would use manure from any animal except meat eaters. The manure would have to be well composted and meet my other requirements: I would recommend you stay away from a source that uses wood chips or straw in the stalls. You won't be able to tell from the well composted manure that there was straw; so you have to look at the manure at the source to see the fresh manure. A little straw/hay is OK as that's spoiled hay that was uneaten. What you want to do is minimize the amount of straw/hay. Find an old multi story barn because it's very likely a new one story barn will have a concrete floor and need the bedding to absorb the urine. An old barn with a dirt floor won't use any bedding. I say this because on any mention of manure someone will poke up their head and warn you about not using manure because of this problem or that problem. From my experience seeds won't germinate in wood chips. And straw is supposed to be contaminated with herbicides. I've been using manure for 40 years and have never used bagged commercial fertilizer. If you buy your flower or veggie starts you may be able to grow those out; although in my opinion the plants won't be as nice as if grown in soil with manure. I would recommend you still test the manure. Get a little of it, mix with your soil and plant seeds into it. Beans work fine to test. if you get no or poor germination ignore that manure source. It's my opinion that 90% of the stories about manure causing gardening problems are because of wood chips in the manure. Forty years ago a lot of people used it as their fertilizer source. By planting time you couldn't find any. Then 15 or 20 years ago they started using wood chips for stall bedding and that's when these stories started.

I dig mine in as deep as the spade and turn over the spade letting the sod fall into the bottom of the hole. I'd recommend you add manure for a few years; although not as much. What I try to work for is to make the raw clay look like black loam. I'd suggest an inch of manure after the first year for 3 or 4 years. Then you can skip the manure for some years depending on how much compost you can make. After a few years the clods will be broken up and you could cover the ground with manure and then push a digging fork in and lift it out with the tines parallel to the ground. The manure will get mixed better this way than turning it over with a spade.

From my experience some plants don't start well in a tray and some don't like to be transplanted. I've quit growing squash and cucumber starts as I've found that if you plant a few starts and also direct sow some seed; you won't be able to tell which plants were which. Trying both methods will give you 2 different crops. Most folks who use transplants don't also direct seed some of their crop. You don't need all your veggies or flowers come at the same time.

Well, at least it doesn't have any bread in it!! LOL! let us know how it works out......and if you do decide to order more.

So you got 5 yards of blood meal. You should have no trouble with rabbits.

tj

It's beautiful, if whiffy. I kind of forgot two things. 1.) I live on a lake, which is why I've come to fertilize with leafy compost with worm castings instead of stronger nitrogen products and b.) do steer get fed growth hormones? I'll buy bales of hay and erect a barrier by the shore, which won't help much. I was going to do that anyway, just as a generally good idea.

I don't have rabbits, but I do have a deer who visits nightly. And I had a bobcat walk past my sliders the other day. Maybe the kill pen aura will give my deer pause.

"Well, at least it doesn't have any bread in it!!"

Oh, believe you me! I checked. I said, “Not so much as a cornflake, right? No crust cut off some fussy child’s morning toast? No….?” He interrupted me, “Look, Lady. What kind of outfit do you think we run here?!” I quickly apologized, “I just wanted to make sure there was nothing gross in there.” “I told you! Manure, skin, flesh, bone, blood and wood chips. Frankly I’m offended you’d ask.”