Thanks for the Horticultural Myths link, I have saved it for more thorough reading.. I can get alfalfa pellets and just scatter them, and then turn the hose on them and later use my hand cultivator to scratch them into the mulch, they seem to break down prety fast, and I do this when I can no longer see the remains of the last scattering....I also scatter Milorganite and Black Hen and Black Cow, and mulch, so it all becomes a mush of stuff.....I have used Fish Meal also, but can no longer obtain it so have switched to Fish Emulsion, and think I will pour some in a large pail of water and throw it around the beds.... I have a problem with Rheumatoid Arthritis so have to limit the labor involved, seeking the easiest path.... sally

I've used both the cubes and the pellets and much prefer the pellets. When I first started using alfalfa around the garden, I looked all over town and all I could find were alfalfa cubes intended to be horse feed. I went through a 50# bag of the cubes and finally ran out last fall. This spring when I went to find a replacement, the store I got them from last time had switched to a pellet product instead of the cubes. Now that I have used both, the pellets break up and dissolve into the soil much faster than the broken up cubes ever did. Plus the pellets seem to dissolve into the tea better or at least the 'crud' goes through my watering can better than the sludge resulting from the cubes did. Pellets are the way to go unless the cubes are all you can find. As long as it is 100% alfalfa and no salt, it should be fine for the garden.

As far as I understand it that it needs heat to ferment. If it's been cold and snowey then I guess it hasn't been warm enough. I have only tried in the summer and believe me in three days the stench was horrible. I have never tried cubes though, only the pellets.

Braverichard, I think when people talk about hay or things like grass clippings or coffee grounds matting down and starving the soil, they're talking about much larger amounts of those substances. You wouldn't use alfalfa hay or any of the above substances as mulch alone, for instance, since 2-3" of those substances does indeed clump up and create a barrier. For me, I sprinkle the hay around the base of the root zone on top of the existing mulch like oak leaves or bark mulch, so that the existing air pockets that naturally occur in the mulch keep the hay from clumping up. It also disappears pretty quickly into the mass of the mulch with natural gardening activity, so I don't scratch it in or anything. If I'm really organized (ha! translation - I did this one year), then I put my alfalfa hay and a little fertilizer and/or Ironite down on top of the mostly bare soil at the end of winter before I spread around the bags of leaves I use to protect those roses. And flowersaremusic - that is a good example of how I handle that many roses without a staff (as if - my teenage son and daughter wander out for a half hour now and then if they're really bored, but that's it). I. Do. Not. Fuss. Life's too short, so I don't do things that aren't either fun or really really necessary. Spraying in my world is neither so I don't do it. Deadheading is fun, though not technically necessary, because it allows me to get up close and personal with the roses. Even in a good year I can deadhead most of the yard in a couple of hours on one weekend day, extending maybe into a second weekend day if I'm having a good season. Most of July through October this year I sadly deadheaded in under an hour, including pruning, photos and miscellaneous tasks, hence my complaints about the stinky-poo gardening year for roses. Speaking of stinky-poo, I'm glad that alfalfa tea isn't supposed to smell, so I'm obviously doing it wrong and it's not a good fit for me. And don't get me started on Milorganite - I bought it thinking it would be the same as Ironite effectively, but there are few garden substances that smell worse to me. I couldn't even stand being in the same room as my shoes that had stepped in it, and I have a very poor nose for detecting most smells, at least the good ones. Dogs have very odd ideas of what smells good, and tasting it - bleeggggh! My technique for fertilizing my roses is literally once a year, wheeling a cart with my bale of alfalfa and bag of fertilizer next to a rose bed and a) reach for a fistful of hay (two fists for large roses), b) flick hay around base of rose, c) dip a cup or less of fertilizer and spread around drip line, d) move on. Maybe 15 seconds a rose if I don't get distracted, but heavens - part of the point of gardening is to get distracted. I distribute the big post-winter pruning over 4 or 5 relatively sane weekends of a couple hours each day, starting some time in March when the hardiest roses start budding up a bit (but yes, I wait for the forsythia with the fussy pants roses). The only truly brutal period is planting season from late April to the end of May where I am spending most of my weekend daylight hours planting way too many additional roses, many of whom replace dead ones. Fortunately I have pretty good soil and can plant a rose in 15 minutes (or less for band roses). Back to Adrian's original point - rose gardening is about observation and figuring out what works or doesn't work for you. If you like it and your roses like it, do it even if it's supposed to be "wrong" (like ahem, planting them too close together). If it causes problems, like alfalfa pellets burning, figure out what wasn't working and change it. If you don't like it, don't do it, and be prepared for consequences (like ignoring blackspot or having fewer roses). It's gotta be fun or what's the point! Cynthia