Amending the garden soil is essential. This allows plants to grow and harvest healthy produce. To do this, we use decomposed manure, but it is important to amend the garden at the right time. Let’s take a closer look at the different manures available, their specificities, and take stock of the best time of the year to incorporate manure into the soil so that the plants only benefit from it.
The different manures useful in the garden
Many manures can be used to amend the vegetable garden, as they are rich in organic matter. Manure is made up of plant waste, animal waste and straw. It’s a 100% natural amendment of choice that every gardener should use in his vegetable garden or his pleasure garden (for certain plants at least).
But to achieve the goal you have set yourself, you might as well choose the manure according to its characteristics because it must correspond as well as possible to the soil you have in your garden.
Horse and other equine manure
When it comes to manure, that’s what we usually think of spontaneously. Its particularities are as follows:
- Light,
- rich in straw,
- His temperature rises rapidly,
- Improves a ground:
- Spreads in the spring when well composted,
- Enriches vegetable garden soil:
Horse manure can also be used in mulch at the foot of tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucurbits (squash, cucumber, melon, watermelon, etc.) because they are gourmet plants.
poultry manure
People who raise a few hens to taste the good eggs they produce have the possibility of using manure from the hen house in the garden. Made up straw and chicken droppingsit offers the following advantages:
- heats up quickly,
- Is rich in:
- Trace elements,
- Nitrogen,
- Potash.
- Goes well with salads, leeks, green cabbage and other leafy vegetables,
- Is a good compost activator.
However, care must be taken to do not abuse it because he can burn the root system of plants. To overcome this problem, it is advisable to mix it with compost before use. It is also a good way to tend towards balance because poultry manure is quite low in humus.
Sheep and goat manure
This is a manure:
- Hot,
- Sec,
- Riche :
- In fertilizing elements,
- In potash.
This goat and/or sheep manure should only be used when it is very well decomposed. We therefore do not use it never fresh.
It is perfect for spreading on land in which fruiting vegetables have been grown such as eggplant and tomato for example because they are greedy and have exhausted the soil well.
cattle manure
It is a particularly manure compact that can be used for amend very light soils. It is appreciated for the following particularities:
- Cold,
- Wet,
- Decomposes very slowly.
Il gives substance to siliceous earth or calcareous soil whose particularity is to heat up extremely quickly. Cattle manure is added to this type of soil so that the plants benefit from a certain coolness, especially during the high summer heat. Spread at the base of plants in the vegetable garden, it is a good maintenance fertilizer. But we can also bury some of this cow manure in the ground just before sowing.
As to pig manure and at rabbit manure, they are less frequently used. Pig manure can be incorporated into compost or other manure because it is very cold. Rabbit manure is heavy so it is ideal on light soil. It can be used in a thin layer provided it is decomposed. Otherwise, a simple digging allows it to be incorporated into the soil to be cultivated.
When to amend garden soil with manure?
The gardener can fertilize the soil of the garden at two particular times: march and october.
It is unnecessary, and even highly detrimental to plants, to amend garden soil with manure more frequently than twice a year.
In spring, the period is perfect because it is the time of the recovery of vegetation. Manure brings a whiplash necessary for this process. In autumn, the addition of manure makes it possible tomaintain the life of the soilnamely of all the micro-organisms without which no culture would be possible.
How to use manure to improve the soil in the garden?
We do not use manure indiscriminately. As we have seen, there are only two periods in the year during which the amendment is welcome. But you also have to know how to use it.
Admittedly, a manure is used fresh, that is to say young, or well aged, but it is absolutely necessary to remember that young manure should never be used directly on plants for two specific reasons:
- It contains a number of pathogenic germs,
- Il can burn plants during the decomposition process.
These problems disappear once the manure is well decomposed, hence the interest in waiting a few months.
Manure can be used for:
- Maintain the life of the soil,
- Bring once a year (in autumn) organic fertilizers to fruit trees,
- Enrich the planting holes with many plants (shrubs, tomato plants, squash, etc.), either in spring or in autumn depending on the recommended planting period,
- In mulch.
Use of young manure (fresh)
Young manure should be incorporated into compost, preferably vegetable to obtain a perfectly balanced fertilizer. During the composting phase, the manure is gradually freed from pathogenic germs.
Some gardeners do it differently. They store their manure on a pallet until it forms a heap, and let it age for 6 to 8 months. Placing a pile of manure on pallets is very important to allow the juices to drain properly during the decomposition phase that the aerobic soil fauna. And to prevent driving rains from washing it out and depriving it of its assets at the same time, it is strongly recommended to cover a pile of manure with a layer of straw retained by a net or other.
It is quite possible to spread fresh manure on a plot of the vegetable garden when it is not cultivated, after the uprooting of the last vegetables of the season for example. We act in autumn, but not too often, ideally every two or three years.
It is necessary to have a good quantity of manure to cover even 5 ares because one counts for 100 m² (1 are) between 100 and 300 kg of manure. Then just have to be patient to give it time to break down.
Use of decomposed manure
Manure made up of droppings and lots of litter is a strawy manure ideal for composting fairly quickly. This is enough for the life of the soil to be maintained. No need to bury this manure. Once winter is over, a griffage (surface plowing) allows the last residues to be buried, all the rest being decomposed.
In the spring, straw manure is used in the garden well composted. Experienced gardeners also recommend adding fresh manure to the compost as it acts as a powerful biological activator.
Finally, not all plants tolerate being grown in soil amended with manure. This is for example the case of carrots, garlic, shallot or onion. Before smoking the soil of your garden, it is better to make sure that the plants that will be grown there will appreciate this attention.
The use of manure depends on the fruit and vegetable production, but also flowers. The gardener therefore has every interest in always having some available because it is a biological solution pour produce more and better. Manure produces healthy fruits and vegetables. But it is imperative to prepare your manure, whatever it is, so as not to risk being counterproductive.