Hey Jed- Most folks compost with no animal manure at all. Works great. Some folks--not me--have concern about ecoli and choose not to compost manure. If you get it , great. If not,you don't need it. Start saving, chopping, and composting your vegetable scraps and spent coffee and filters. With horse manure, you have to be careful about direct application to the garden. 1- If it is not fully rotted it will burn your plants. 2- Even if it is fully rotted is is chock full of weed seeds--just what do you think that horse ate on the front end to make the manure on the back end? I always compost manure for thse reasons.

If I understand your question correctly, it's the same decision I faced a month ago. I have a windrow style compost pile and had been adding new UCG's etc. to one end, leaving the other end untouched to finish up (sort of). When I needed it, I took all of the untouched, half-finished compost and spread it on my garden. This used up about half of the pile. At that point, I stopped adding anything to the remaining pile and declared that untouchable, so it will finish up. I'll start using that in the spring. I then started dumping new UCG's and kitchen scraps, etc. in a new pile. This I'll add to until I use up the other pile I've saved for spring. This way I always have one untouched pile to use, and one growing pile in anticipation. Note that my standards of "finished" are very low - if it doesn't look like garbage I'll use it in my garden. My local coffee shop is still giving me UCG's and I hope to get them all winter. The only problem I've had so far is trying to get frozen UCG's out of the bucket (they leave the buckets outside for me). While I'm no way near as experienced as others here, I say add the UCG's to the new pile and let the old leafy one rest. Claire

Snails. LOL! I haven't seen any snails here. How 'bout I plant a row of lettuce leading from my veggie garden all the way across the yard to the fence...a slug hi-way. The slugs can follow it to the fence and then crawl under it. LOL! ;-))Na that wouldn't work either...the slugs would just stay where the food was. :O Our yard used to be a wide open 3 houses wide park like setting. When these neighbours moved in....I went out one day and all the dirt had been pulled out of one of my barrel planters in the driveway. At first I couldn't figure out what happened....then I noticed little toys and toy road systems in the dirt. The ornaments were tossed to the ground on the side. This neighbour also never put their garbage out and it smelled really bad......they put it over on the property line between our houses...falling all over my yard. We used to park up beside our house in our driveway........but we couldn't stand the smell......so started parking down at the bottom of the driveway. Shortly after we build the 6 foot fence along that side. The bi-law people came and talked to them about their smelly garbage a few times, as well. The problem with the fence was, it looked really bare to me.....so last Christmas I put lights on it and some painted wooden ornaments....that neighbour kept knocking them off. I actually saw this neighbour hitting the fence one day with a big stick. I'm not talking the kids either. When I put the blooming bags up on the fence in the spring......I was worried......but I tried to make sure they couldn't be easily knocked off. They tried but couldn't knock them off. We also built a greenhouse where we used to park.....so the space isn't complete lost. They got rid of the dogs, but still throw garbage and wood pieces and stuff over the fence. I just pick it up and do my best to ignor them. Not much else I can do. We built the fence to bi-law specification of 6 feet along the sides of the property.....but it really isn't tall enough. Ooops now I got this thread off topic...My Bad! How about...for December gardening guide...keep gardening threads on topic. I will try..... Happy thoughts all, now wheres my seed catalogues. Sierra :-)

Susan, A lot of the flowers that you have planted for butterflies are native in our pastures.....like partridge pea and cassia, for example, and they are in bloom and looking lovely. We have been cutting pathways through the pastures and not mowing the entire pastures themselves, so the wildflowers are huge and thick and lush, and we have tons of butterflies, moths and numerous other insects. It really is a jungle out there. Having had no rain for a couple of weeks, it was beginning to get pretty dry, but then we received an inch of rain overnight so that perked up the plants a bit. I hve four o'clocks in partial shade (morning sun, afternoon dappled shade) that have reached over 6 feet in height! They are gorgeous and are covered in flowers and, of course, the fragrance at night is heavenly. However, I know a good stiff wind will knock them down. I never collect the seeds, just let them fall and reseed. My cypress vine isn't blooming yet either and I think it is a little late this year, so I guess we have to blame the weather.....I bet we will have blooms soon though. I am not terribly surprised you have a yellow pear volunteer plant as yellow pear seems especially prone to volunteer. My volunteers usually come up in pathways and I have to move them, but I love seeing them come up. You never know what you will get....and some great tomatoes have been 'discovered' from either volunteer seedlings or crossed seed saved and planted the following year. I have volunteer pumpkin vines growing on the fence around the guinea pen. They seemed to come out of nowhere about 3 weeks ago (in almost full shade) and are growing like mad (trying to find sunlight?) and are already blooming. I don't know if they will make any pumpkins since they are in so much shade. I have volunteer sunflowers in the dog yard and around the compost pile, a volunteer tomato plant in another compost pile--I think the fruit look like Marianna's Peace--and tiny volunteer tomato plants in the veggie garden. There seem to be more volunteers than usual which I attribute to the weather. The Grandpa Ott's morning glories reseeded themselves from last year and are growing like crazy on the fence on the west side of the garden. The purple hyacinth beans climbing the porch posts are blooming. I am seeing both balck-chinned hummers and ruby-throated hummers, although not in huge numbers. The pond is full of frogs.....frogs, frogs, frogs everywhere. Between them and the tree frogs and the katydids, it is almost too loud at night to sleep! We are seeing quite a lot of non-venomous snakes and, for once, not seeing venomous ones. Yippee! I have virginia creeper everywhere, so thought I might see some virginia creeper sphinxes, but haven't. We have had quite a few clearwings. We have a billion dragonflies and (FINALLY) no mosquitoes. I am harvesting peppers and tomatoes like crazy, and the herbs are all huge monsters....well,except for the dill and parsley which are being devoured by the cats. I am starting to get a few large pumpkins here and there, but the melons are still quite small. Everything that has been blooming all summer continues to bloom: zinnias, cosmos, 4 o'clocks, verbena bonariensis, marigolds, salvias in red, orange, white, purple, coral and blue, veronica, black-eyed susan vine, daturas (several different ones), pentas, scarlet runner beans, Chaco Canyon runner beans, sedum, begonias, cannas, tansy, catmint, nasturtiums, mexican heather, hibiscus coccinus, swamp mallow, portulaca, honeysuckle, crossvine, yellow and orange-flowered trumpet creeper, and sunflowers. The pastures are full of blooms too, and I won't try to name them all, but all the usual summer prairie wildflowers are blooming, especially the partridge pea, black-eyed susans, Mexican hat, greenthread daisies and asters. The native goldenrods, autumn sage and blazing starts aren't blooming yet, but they are about to bloom. The milkweeds have all gone to seed as have a lot of the spring bloomers. Can you believe it is the end of July already? Dawn