Home Depot has those orange buckets with lids for $3.00. I always carry them with me; the lids fit tight, so as not to spill over. A bucket is like getting a bag bought from the store only free. I use five buckets to make the trip worth it. To use the manure I fill the bucket with water and let it soak for a while, and then use the liquid as a fertilizer around some of my more hardy plants. I am hoping that by soaking the manure I will be killing the bugs that I get here, like scorpions, centipedes and roaches large as mice, and of course speed decomposition. The lid will help keep any smells from bumming your neighbors and help drown anything that might crawl out. I then use the stuff without composting it, by digging a hole or trench near where I plant. By the time the plant is big enough the manure has mellowed. Keep in mind that I am in zone 11, manure break down fast here. Oh and just go to the front office and ask and they will give you the run down on the place like: do not drive too fast, the horse riders have the right away, if you open a gate close it, do not leave gates open, do not feed the horses, though they love them over sized carrots from the garden and if you bring your dog to the stables do not let him chase the chickens. There are probably more rules; those are just the ones that I know, now. Mostly though horse people are good folks and do not mind you being there. John

Many garden centers sell inexpensive pH test kits. They're fun, and simplify all that pH stuff. Your manure and organic matter (and the life forms they support) will nudge it toward neutral over time, and it can be interesting to watch. Fall is the best time for serious liming. Permanent pathways provide habitat for earthworms, ground beetles, etc, and give you some access regardless of the weather. For temporary access to some areas, you also can lay boards on the ground and stand on the boards. If you planned to use your wheat as a cover crop, you'll need to take it down 2-3 weeks before you need the space, or you can pull it up and let it dry into mulch, or compost it. In mild winter climates, actively growing wheat does not go down without a little bit of a fight. Back to the permanent pathways. You can sow them with legumes and well-behaved grasses, and mow them to make mulch for the beds or rows next to them. It's a cool system. Picture it -- next year, a ribbon of crimson clover laced with blue bachelor buttons leads you to your beautiful [fill in blank] and you feel so happy! Here is a link that might be useful: my website

Pic helps a bunch. Your raised beds look good, and looking at the far one it looks like you used the plastic only on the sides where the wood is. So I don't see a problem with the plastic. You simply have raised beds, not containers. At 8" depth the cardboard is unnecessary. You can just pile the dirt into the beds on the grass, on the grass will be smothered. At 8" in the near term it will limit your root depth, and may cause problems with deeper rooting plants and roots veg's. If it were mine, I'd take it out. With the soil on top of the underlying turf, it will settle over time as the grass underneath decomposes. My experience with St. Augustine is that settling will be ~ 1". With the cardboard the settling will be a bit more, maybe 1.5". Now, the grass -- it looks like you're in Cocoa Beach (zip code), and the turf looks like a very decent stand of St. Augustine. Your problem with the grass won't be the stuff in the beds that gets smothered, it will be the stuff on the outside that comes right up to the edges. It will try to find a way into those beds, and usually St. Augustine is successful (if there's any Bermuda in there it tends to be even more invasive). I would encourage to develop a turf-free zone around those beds. There are many options. On the soil - since you're dealing with uncomposted horse manure, I would suggest no more than 1" of that per bed. Add it on top of a base soil fill in the beds, then mix in in well, trying to get it distributed through the entire 8" depth. The base soil in those beds would ideally be a loam or sandy loam, if you can get it. Being in Cocoa Beach I suspect your base soil is rather sandy. You could use that (if you have some to move) along with some compost and the horse manure, but you'll probably have better luck with bringing in new soil. Check landscape supplies in your yellow pages. Final point - exposure. Don't know when that picture was taken, but the beds are in complete shade. Where do those beds sit relative to the fence -- west side, east side, etc, and what is the direction of the fence line (N/E/S/W)? The good news is you're in the beginning so with just a bit of work you can get it right and enjoy some great growing. Since you are using raw manure I would encourage you to heed to 90/120 day before harvest recommendations. Someone getting sick because you were in a hurry just isn't worth it. Be patient. Since we're already into May, and you're way down there in south FL, your timing is really good for fall planting. This post was edited by TXEB on Sun, May 12, 13 at 15:23

As I stated in my original post. I can give you some numbers if you're interested but I won't post actual documents. Sorry, it's a legal thing. By the way, you may be on to something regarding the diet but my gut feeling is that differences in diet will only go so far. Their physiology is very different from cows, horses, etc. (primarily how their body uses water, which I'm guessing affects solute concentrations in their tissues and waste). I could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet that it's going to be salty regardless. I'm also taking into account the fact that zoos will usually try to mimic the diet that their species typically has access to. Anyway, I have averaged out some results and here are a few of the highlights. The salinity level of the camel manure typically came in around 30 to 35 dS/m. For comparison, a soil salinity level of 3.0 dS/m is considered elevated and could cause some plants to start showing foliage burn and reduced vigor. (Another fun factoid I'll throw in here just for kicks ECw of sea water is around 40 dS/m or so.) Of course, you would be amending with the stuff rather than planting directly into it so let's explore that a little more. Let's say you were amending a sandy loam soil at a typical compost rate of 4 cu. yds. per 1000 sq. ft., tilled to a depth of 6 inches. (to get an organic content of approximately 20% by volume.) That would raise your salinity by about 10 dS/m, which would be on top of whatever the salinity level in the soil was before you started amending. 10 dS/m alone would be enough to cause most plants to show burning and stunting. Many plants would just plain die. Also consider the fact that about 70% of the salinity level is coming from soluble sodium. (around 250 milliequivalents per liter) Also, soluble chloride was found to be around 200 to 300 milliequivalents per liter. The high sodium and chloride values brings up the specific toxicity issues I described above. Also the abundant sodium is not balanced by calcium and magnesium and you end up with an SAR of around 35 or so. (An SAR of 6 is considered elevated) and use of such a high sodium / low calcium and magnesium material could bring about an elevated SAR in the soil, which can impede soil structure and water infiltration. I also noticed something else that I'd forgotten about. The boron values in the samples I'm looking at come in at about 5 to 6 parts per million (ppm) in saturation extract. If used at the 4 cu. yd. rate, this would be likely to bump the boron level above the threshold at which a broad range of plants start to show boron toxicity symptoms (burning of foliage and poor growth performance). The really fun part about boron is that it does not leach readily and, consequently, correcting an elevated boron level in the soil is particularly challenging. Could you use it at a very low rate and avoid the problems? Well sure, but like I said before, a rate low enough to avoid the problems would provide very little benefit compared to other materials. Of course, maybe all camel manures aren't equal but with the information I have, I would stick with something less exotic.