FarmYard Manures - worth it ?

We buy the occasional bag of Westland Growsure Farmyard Manure for our veg and flower beds but these days it seems more a very fine milled product, nothing like the traditional manure.

Do they and other similar brands really contain any decent amounts of real manure these day to make it worthwhile using or would we be better just using things like FB&B , Chicken Pellets and our own garden compost ?

Used to consider adding real horse manure to our compost heap, but seem to remember some forum posts about it could be contaminated with varoius medicines used on the horses ..?

 

I think it depends, just my thoughts but proper manure did have feed, but was really a soil structure improver and moisture holder.
FBB is just a fertiliser that adds nutrients but does nothing for soil structure.

Never tried those expensive bags of manure from garden centres so cant comment on them.

The problem with manure was down to a weedkiller used on hay that was then fed to horses.

I'm not sure but it might have come about due to the ragwort problem and it getting into horse feed.

 

The commercial stuff is so fine because it's well rotted in a hot compost heap. There are a few dotted around the countryside near me. The heaps are enormous. They seem to be built in lines, fresh stuff at one end, old stuff at the other. You can often see the steam coming off them.

I actually don't think there's anything magical about manure. It's just digested grass at the end of the day. I think the main benefit of it is it's moisture holding ability. I wouldn't expect it to add a lot of nutrients but it's an excellent excellent soil conditioner.

Personally I wouldn't worry too much about medicines being in it. We get more poison from the air we breathe and the cooking oils and things we use than you'll ever get from plants grown in manure.

 

I'm far from an expert on manure, but I know one thing. It's benefits might be fantastic, mediocre, or plain old useless, fresh or well rotted down, used pure, or mixed in, whatever, who cares about any of that.

The more pressing issue here, and one I can't get my head round is the fact that people would willingly part way with their hard earned money, in the current economic crisis we're in, to actually buy.....BUY!!!......Horse s**t!!!

Go to a local farm and ask the farmer if you can have a couple of buckets of the stuff. The farms in my area literally have manure heaps half as big as my house! Fresh steaming manure from one side, and well rotted down composted type manure from the other.

Up until I got my own compost heap running and matured, I visited most of my local farms regularly to collect worms for angling, as food for my tropical fish, and I'd always leave with a few buckets of s**t too for my plants.

 

Never had to buy those shop products, as I get my manure from an organic beef farm. The farmer piles the manure up into an enormous, volcano like cone and it steams away for half a year at least. Never, ever had one weed from it as the seeds inside must have been cremated. No smell either. And, of course, no artificial fertilizers, weedkillers, etc used on an organic farm.

 

There being 800000+ horses (and ponies!) in the UK, there should be enough for us all. Locally I have a diy livery where its freely available to collect, once rotted. Alert to the potential of aminopyralid, I quizzed the proprietor, to be assured that a)all hay was home grown, b)that his father had owned the land since 1947, and that he was 'too bl**dy tight' to spend out on sprays!

 

It might be fine due to the manure being processed through, anaerobic digestion in a biogas digester. A farmer near us has one which he puts through pig manure, he approached me about purchasing the manure after all the gases were captured. It was in general a fine material, actually a nice product, but what he wanted for it was more than I was paying per cube for peat. I was basically competing with the energy sector which was going to pay more than I was prepared to, the farmer basically was trying to get a good price off me instead of having to pelletize the manure for burning, maximising his profit.

There are roughly 700 biogas digesters in the UK, excluding water treatment, most of these are in the agriculture sector. They are making money from the gas and from the left-over material that ends up being incinerated for energy.

A couple of weeks ago when I had a load of peat delivered from Ireland, I asked the driver where he was heading next. He was off to collect a load of poultry manure pellets which was going to be incinerated.

 

Burning this stuff is criminal.
Surely it could be used as fertilisers by farmers who are now moaning about the price of chemical fertilisers that basically poison the rivers anyway.

 

I brought this very question up with a farming guy I know. He was moaning because of the huge increase in costs of his fertiliser so I asked him why farmers spend ridiculous amounts of money on chemical ferts when they could use free traditional fertiliser from their farm animals.

Apparently modern chemical ferts are like crop steroids, you get a proper bang for your buck. Faster growing and higher yielding crops, which makes complete sense really.

Traditional ferts are poor in comparison and are only used by most farmers as an addition to the land to improve soil structure.

Great for us gardeners who grow stuff for a bit of fun and relaxation, but no good for farmers who grow stuff for a living!!

 

But legislation allows it.

Turning manure into renewable energy | Equine Wellness Magazine

Poultry litter as biomass energy: A review and future perspectives - ScienceDirect

In 2010 there was 23 industrial incinerators in the Uk, now there is 44 which are burning nearly 11 million tonnes. There are currently 16 new incinerators under construction, with another 45 been given planning permission.

The UK is doubling the number of rubbish burning incinerators over the next 10 years (inews.co.uk)

It seems like, we are going down the, burn everything route, instead of recycling.

 

Well yeah I see the point but I still think burning is wrong.
I'm sure some of the more organic farmers would use it.
I suppose its greener to burn that kind of stuff rather than coal or ga

 

We have had an incinerator for household rubbish for quite a few years now.
I think household stuff gets recycled as well, I hope so because we have to separate it all, along with garden waste then a separate bin for food waste.

So I dont think we are burning everything, if it can be recycled, but I do think too much organic waste is being burned and too much timber.
They say it is sustainable, but I cant really see much difference in burning gas or oil, if you burn something you get pollution.
At least once fossil fuels are gone you cant burn them anymore, wood, you can keep growing it and burning it forever.
But I doubt the growth rate would be able to keep up with the burn rate.

 

We would like to think so or are lead to believe.

The Dirty Truth About Your Rubbish: Dispatches Monday 8th March, 8pm, Channel 4 | Channel 4

The fact more incinerators are under construction with others planned suggests dispatches maybe not too far off the truth.

 

I think until some bright spark works out that more people equals more pollution they are just pi**ing in the wind.
We all have a footprint on the planet and its not possible to live without causing some kind of damage to the planet.

I think we passed 8 billion the other day, its just not sustainable.

 

I work at a recycling centre, and when you see what I see everyday, and it's the same for recyclers all over the country, then you'll understand why incineration is increasing.

Anyone who diligently cleans and segregates their household waste and places it in the colour coded council provided bins is doing what SHOULD be done, by EVERY household in the country.

Sadly, this is not the case, not by a long shot. Household waste comes to our recycling centre in bulk tippers, tonnes and tonnes of the stuff. We have a machine which is extremely efficient at sorting glass, plastic bottles, aluminium and steel cans, typically the contents of your recycling bin.

If this is all the material the machine had to deal with the recycling world would be easy from my point of view. Government annual recycling targets would easily be hit, landfills would see less material going there, and incineration wouldn't even be needed.

But the sad truth is that when you rely solely on joe public to start the whole process off, by way of segregating at the very beginning, then you are on to a huge loser. For every single diligent family who do their bit, there are countless others who don't give two hoots, and trust me, I see the proof every single day.

The contamination levels in the material meant for recycling are appalling. Food waste, nappies, garden waste, clothing to name but a few.

The recycling machines can't process this waste, it jams them up, they simply weren't designed for such contamination. We do what we can, but most gets loaded back into bulk skips and guess where it goes!!! It's a battle recyclers can never win. Government targets are no longer achievable. Do we start landfilling it all like we used to do, no, because we're already sending too much to landfill as it is (your unrecyclable bin waste goes to landfill, and some to incineration).

For recycling to work, every single household in the country needs to be on board with the whole programme imo. And frankly, we're light years away. It's unsurprising that governments are giving the go ahead to more incineration plants because it's beginning to dawn on them that recycling is just not working, not at the levels they want it to work anyway.