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Dr. Leda's Rose Journal |
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Dr. Leda Talks Dirty
By Dr. Leda Horticulture, O. R.
March, 2005
All the scoop on garden poop...
Remember that really gross kid in the second grade, the cootie-infested boy who sat on the back row, picked his nose, and told stupid fart jokes, the amateur scatologist who knew at least five hundred ways to say "poop"? Well, guess what: He's baaaaack!
Ok, the actual kid himself is not back. I don't even know what became of the one in my class (there's one in every class, right?), and I'm not sure I want to find out. I mean, what if he became a corporate bigwig billionaire and is now gleefully running the country from his mega-yacht while dating 19-year-old super models? Knowing about that would pretty much ruin my day.
No, scat boy is only back in spirit. Every year in early spring, when the deciduous magnolias burst into bloom and the young male mockingbirds send forth their first desperate mating calls, I, the distinguished and dignified (if not yet totally grey-haired) Dr. Leda Horticulture, inevitably start to channel that really gross kid.
"Poo-poo!" I declare furtively from the back row, to anyone who will listen. "Doo-doo! Zoo-doo! Manure! Guano! Castings! Droppings! Dung! Road apples! Pasture pies!" I am a veritable walking Roget of fecal matter. Before long my friends are wrinkling their noses, rolling their eyes, and muttering about cooties. "Don't you ever think about anything besides waste products?" they wonder. And the answer, sadly, is no. Not this time of year anyway.
Because early spring is when my maternal instincts run amok. All my roses (that sounds like a really bad soap opera, doesn't it?) are sending out beautiful lush tender new growth, and they're crying out to be fed, shrieking like open-beaked baby birds, pitifully shrill and hysterical at the sight of their mother. Only the stoniest of hearts could resist.
To make matters worse, the dormant perennials (aka "companion plants") have barely begun to emerge from their long winter's nap, and most of the weeds are still passed out in a seedy motel down in Ft. Lauderdale or wherever it is they go for winter break. My soil is buck naked, vulnerable and exposed for all the world to see. Next thing I know, the biological urge to amend it has overridden all rational directives from my cerebral cortex, and I must give in to this primal limbic drive to nourish the soil.
There have, however, been tragic springs when I actually became so crazed and carried away with the annual feeding frenzy that I blew my entire gardening budget on fertilizers and soil amendments. And since we all know that there's always room for more roses, this is a highly unacceptable no-no. Hence, I have developed a scholarly and parsimonious fascination with the various animal poo-poos, which make excellent, inexpensive fertilizers and soil amendments, and are often even available to savvy Shinola shoppers free for the taking.
Of all the fine economical doo-doos on the menu, my current favorite is that of the horse. Horse guano is less dense than other types of droppings, and is great for improving the physical structure of the soil. It increases aeration, permeability, and water-holding capacity, and at the same time provides good pH buffering. It has an excellent N-P-K ratio, and is teeming with busy little micro-organisms that add biological activity to the soil. And since an average thousand-pound horse produces about 50 pounds of poop per day (well, that's one sure way to get caught up on those back issues of The New Yorker), amounting to nearly 10 tons every year, most horse owners are more than eager to give the stuff away, at no charge. Call the stable nearest you today and ask!
While we're on the subject of horses, I'd like to digress a moment and share an embarrassing little cowboy story. In my personal quest to become acquainted with numerous owners of four-legged fertilizer factories, I occasionally venture out to zydeco dances down at the local cowboy bar. One night I noticed that the nice young man selling tickets at the door was using an "Under 21" hand-stamp to mark underage dancers, so they wouldn't be able to purchase alcohol. Not being much of a drinker myself, I cajoled him into stamping the backs of my hands, just for a lark. (But I mean, heLLOOOoo! I am SO not "Under 21," ok?).
Well, it turned out the hand stamp uses some kind of special ink that glows like neon beneath the lights on the dance floor, and within minutes of stepping out under those lights, my popularity skyrocketed. Cowboys who had never given me the time of day were suddenly lined up halfway across the room waiting for a turn to dance with me. Thanks to my delusional hand stamps, I was the belle of the zydeco ball.
So what's the moral of this wry little anecdote? No, it's not "Men really are born without brains, aren't they?" (Though that might make an interesting hypothesis for somebody's senior dissertation.) The take-home lesson du jour is this: For heavens sake, people, you can't believe everything you read!
And I mention this now, because there's a chance you might have read some alarming but misleading rumors about horse manure circulating around the internet. Let's take a look at a few of the more common manurial myths and misconceptions.
Misconception: "Unlike cows, which have ten stomachs to do the job, horses don't fully digest their food, which is full of seeds, so if you spread horse manure around your roses, you're doomed to end up with a TON of horrible pernicious weeds."
Fact: What comes out depends entirely on what goes in. Responsible horse owners do not feed their horses weedy hay or poor quality feed that can cause potentially fatal colic.Talk to the horse's owner, or the head chef at the stable where the donor horse dines. A typical premium equine diet of processed alfalfa pellets and steamed oats does not contain any seeds. Even horses that graze outdoors may not be consuming seeds, either because the local weeds have flown down to Ft. Lauderdale for the season, or because the pasture is kept mowed on a regular basis. And even if it contained seeds at one time, doody that has been shoveled out from the inside of a steaming 20-ton mountain tends to have been composted at high enough temperatures to destroy most viable seeds anyway. If in doubt, you can always compost it yourself when you get it home.
Misconception: "Horse manure is dangerous, because it contains bacteria that spread infectious diseases to humans."
Fact: Numerous studies have shown that horse manure contains very few pathogens that pose a danger to humans. In 2001, in response to concerns expressed by organic gardeners about the safety of using composted horse manure as a soil amendment, Dr. Rob Atwill of UC Davis/Tulare conducted a research study on 250 horses in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Atwill determined that insignificant levels of E. coli and Salmonella were present in adult horse guts, and that composted manure showed no traces of E. coli after 24 hours. Again, when in doubt, compost. Handle the manure sensibly, and make sure your tetanus booster is always up to date.
Misconception: "Horse manure may be good for the soil, but all that bedding material that comes along with it isn't."
Fact: Horses housed in stalls and sheds require soft fluffy absorbent bedding, and when the stalls are cleaned, a bit of this bedding material is inevitably shoveled out along with the waste products. But bedding is too expensive to waste, so only the areas that have been saturated with urine (good stuff, high in nitrogen) are removed (with some high quality bedding, the wet spot forms a neat clump, like kitty litter). Commonly used bedding materials include wood shavings, sawdust, compressed wood pellets, straw, and occasional other sources such as corn stalks or rice hulls. These are all compostable and are also fine for adding directly to the soil, though the woodier material will take a little longer to break down. But again, talk to the folks at the stable to find out exactly what is in your new friend's bedding matter, so you'll know what you're getting.
Next time, we will discuss the finer properties of earthworm castings and llama beans.
Meanwhile, I leave you with the wise words of E.B. White:
"There is no doubt about it, the basic satisfaction in farming is manure, which always suggests that life can be cyclic and chemically perfect and aromatic and continuous."
