If you're buying packaged manure that's composted already, there won't be any smell to speak of.

First,
Every brand of packaged manure I've ever bought has been odorless and looks and smells like black dirt, not manure. It's well aged.
Second, Like the Field of Dreams, Worms and Manure, if you put it down, they will come. I've found them in hanging baskets I put together myself and there were no worms in the mix. How they got there I'll never know?
Third,
The manure will break down much faster than you realize. Most of the action comes from very tiny critters like microbes, good bacteria, and creepy crawly insects.
Fourth,
Have you considered the reason for the cane abundance on the roses in your sunlit backyard is due to the sun. Roses will grow in less sunlit areas but bloom and overall vigor will suffer.
Finally, I'd never dig a hole and fill it completely with
potting soil and fertilizer. Initially the roses will grow well but eventually they'll slow down due to lazy roots staying in the really nice little home you made for them. They need to spread out into the surrounding soil. This makes them stronger overall and better able to cope with less than ideal conditions.
In my sandy soil, I dig a really big hole and mix manure with the existing soil and plant in that.
Deep watering also helps. As the upper portion of soil dries, the roots grow deeper in their search for moisture.
Your stinky yucky manure might be a problem if you used it fresh from the horse or cow but It ages quickly and soon looks and smells like fresh dirt. Scratching fresh smelly stuff into the soil will eliminate the odor and make walking on it less of a yucky chore.
You might think about placing stepping stones in your beds rather than walking on the soil and compacting it.
Even fresh manure stops being so fragrant in a day or two and the bagged stuff doesn't smell. I suspect most of it's just dirt anyway.
You need more roses so you wouldn't have time to feed them so often.
Get it from a stable or farm, not from a garden center.
Put your manure down in winter after the soil freezes. By the time it warms up and the soil thaws, the manure will have aged and lost any smell it may have had. It'll look and feel like dirt by then.

I have to say that I inadvertently left a bag of steer manure in my car for a hot summer week and wow did my car stink! I think maybe "aged" manure might be less pungent, but all packaged manure does not smell like black dirt. So check the label.

I had to spray a bottle of febreeze to be able to drive my car again.

Terry, a sun heated car will make most anything smell. It brings out long hidden odors and makes the odor causing agents volatile when cooler temps wouldn't bother them.
Normally bagged manure is well composted and aged. They keep scraping it up with a skip loader and putting it in a machine that shreds and bags it. They keep scraping the area way past the time any manure has been removed. Thus you may get soil with some of the manure runoff filtered through it. Mostly though it's just soil and if kept out of a sun baked, 135 degree car, doesn't stink.

Even fresh horse manure from a nearby stable is odorless here after about a day.
I wouldn't leave ANY manure in my car for longer than it took me to get home, but I DID once see a lady fill a Mercedes with bags of fresh horse. Packed it tightly around the baby in a carseat in back, and filled the front passenger side, too.

Anyhow, the reason we avoid commercial fertilizers is that they mostly come from big commercial feed lots.
You don't want to know what those cattle are filled full of there, and I'm not altogether positive that composting the stuff gets it hot enough to kill the "Super-Strains" of e-coli that the cattle are carrying, these days -- so I guess I'm prissy myself. ;-)

Jeri

It's just like magic: if you put down something that earthworms like, they appear as if from nowhere and start eating.

Ten years ago this lot was subsoil with all the topsoil scraped off--not a worm to be found. I put down used coffee grounds from Starbucks, a lot of it, and within weeks there were earthworm, lots of them. Weeks, not months. I don't know where they could have come from, but they showed up!

So put the stuff down and check in a few weeks and you'll be surprised at what has showed up :)

(I don't use manure myself because of the awful stuff those poor animals are fed nowadays. I prefer used coffee grounds and alfalfa meal.)

I don't know lucretia1 I bought some bags of potting soil HD brand and it was stiiiiiiinky. I mean bad. It wasn't manure just potting soil. I was waiting for my neighbor to say something. I kept putting it out slowly so I didn't stench her out.
So bagged manure on a hot day near an open window, yeah, no. :-)
Allison

Coffee grounds will help attract earthworms to aerate the soil and their casings will contribute to the nutrients in the soil, but the earthworms will also attract MOLES.. Go ahead and try the well rotted manure; your roses will love it. I am also a prissy girl, but can get down and dirty when it comes to the roses. I routinely mix manure into my planting hole mix, but the smell does NOT compare to the alfalfa fish seaweed emulsion that I give them....and they love it.

Stepping in alittle manure, won't hurt you...LOL
"Just teasing"

JIM

And to think, when I was a little boy and visited my uncle's farm, we'd go to the pasture barefooted and purposely step in the cow pies and wiggle our toes in it.
Hey hoovb,
Did you ever wonder if there were worm eggs in those coffee grounds? He-He!

"worm eggs in those coffee grounds......"

Read as I sit here, coffee in hand! Thanks, Karl!

The only bagged stuff that I have ever bought that has an unpleasant odor is when the dirt (I'm referring to potting soil here) has gotten wet inside the bag and somehow, by whatever process is going on in there, becomes rancid. And then it stinks very badly. I always use the stuff but have wondered if it could harm my plants in any way (haven't ever noticed any detrimental effect).

Lynn

Serenasyh, if you are talking about the standard cubic foot bag of composted manure, I can just about tell by the weight how well composted it is. If I can't pick the bag up without hurting myself, chances are it's wet and could have some odor. Those bags I can load onto my cart without straining are what I want, dry, easy to handle and easy on the nose. I top dress with it, tossing it with my hands around perennials and shrubs....

Wow, you all should have been here when I had two dump trucks of top soil put down in my back yard. The landscaper was so excited he got me the 'good' soil that was scraped off a cow pasture. My neighbors were not so happy.

hehehe! Thanks everyone for all the tips and manure experience; morz8 thanks for the tip about checking out the weight of the bags... I curb my dog poop in the yard into those plastic baggies and boy does that smell up my closed lid garbage can so whenever I lift up the cover to put more of those filled baggies in I always feel like passing out, so was definitely dreading the compost. Karl, funny squishy bemusements on coffee and cowpies.

And that reminds me! I did not want manure compacted also into my sneakers with their ridges as I lumber into my rosebed, LOL! I am very prissy... All guests must remove their shoes after entering the house. But now I may have to ban my own sneakers even from the entryway. hee-hee! and actually leave them outside. Yeah, will definitely have to consider getting "stepping stones"....

You know in spite of hearing the stories of coffee grinds, I used to loooove coffee but swore off caffeine...and when I first started growing roses I thought hmmm, it may actually be worth going back to coffee to help encourage the earthworms, but thought, naaaa, I better not, because I know how much of a coffee addict I can become... Well, at least coffee smells delicious, unlike manure, heehee!

Get thee one of those hedgehog shoe brushes that sit outside your door. The bristles are stiff enough to brush any residue off the bottoms of your shoes.

Or get thee a pair of garden clogs and leave them at the entrance to the house ( :

That's the second mention I've read today of using manure in one's planting mix. My nursery person warns that doing this will cause nitrogen overdose.

serena...decaff! Grounds are grounds, and the roses care not a flip whether they get their caffeine fix, lol! Still yummy for you, yummy for them.

P.S., don't be ashamed of who you are...so you are a self-confessed priss. So? How boring if we were all alike! My husband would be thrilled if I had a little more "priss" and a little less "hillbilly," lol!

You might want to check with your local coffee bar. The chain near my house bags up grounds for gardeners. They put them back in the bags they came in (way to recycle!) and give them away for free. You can get some really good quantities of coffee grounds this way.

The coffee grounds really make a difference in getting the compost steaming. Plus it keeps the grounds out of the landfill.

Frank1 your nursery person is definitely right in that you do! have to be very! careful in using even packaged manure...It will burn young roses unless there is a significant buffer several inches between the manure and the roots...and even when I do the manure I have to spread enough distance between them and the plant because I have read on this forum that manure placed too close to the rose can cause canker...Most importantly, all manure has to be properly processed or else there's tons of bad things that live in manure...For example a lot of puppies raised in farms have to be de-wormed...and we're not talking about the good worms but the very!!!!! bad kind of worms--hookworms, roundworms etc...it's because the puppies are exposed to contaminated grounds...Even my poor Eluane came from an absolutely horrid, irresponsible breeder (Nightshades Ranch-they breed horses and border collies)and Eluane had 4 kinds of infections because they didn't do their vaccinations and deworming... Ironically the breeder had very high ratings on Puppyfinder which is why I trusted them at the time...

Greenhaven,your idea is very creative and would be a terrific idea in theory, except for one thing--- actually decaff is not good for plants and humans, the reason why is because a lot of chemicals are used in the processing to isolate/remove the caffeine from the coffee beans...hehe, hillbilly, that's funny! and no, hillbilly is much more acceptable than prissy/neurotic-- at least hillbillies don't drive people crazy like neurotics do, hahahahaha!

Wow, Lucretia! kudos to your coffee bar...I am amazed that they are so environmentally conscious! where in the Pacific Northwest are you exactly! Wow! Now I need to go to my local Starbucks and check out whether they do this...

so anyone use any well-reputed brand-packed stuff? by the way? stuff that is certifiably processed? I just found out that my local garden center has a local brand, but I am nervous, because I want a guarantee that the stuff has been properly processed...

serenasyh,

I get the coffee grounds from Starbucks. Go in and ask for "Grounds for Gardeners."

Bagged manure has been composted in the open and some of the nutrients are leached out. Most of the nitrogen is released slowly over a year or two. The Black Kow label used to (probably still does) claim an analysis of only NPK 1/2-1/2-1/2. Some samples are probably higher than that, but it's nothing to worry about unless you foolishly use bagged products as soil rather than soil amendment. Bagged manure is probably no more nutritive than yard waste compost, although it may contain more undesirable sodium. A 2" layer dug in provides substantial nutrition, but is mostly organic matter. I think a 3" layer would be OK if the soil drains easily. No need to fertilize for a few months if you amend with manure.

Aaaack! MichaelG, the no-earthworm soil that I have in my shaded lot has very! baaaaad drainage... It takes me forever to water because the water doesn't sink in properly... is it still o.k. then to use the m-stuff with such poor quality drainage? (sorry, I am getting even more prissy and got tired of typing the word over and over again, lol!)...or should I just stick with coffee grinds...

Thanks Lucretia1 I will do this, how strange that I coincidentally mentioned Starbucks...I am very happy that they are undertaking this green effort...hopefully the Kansas branch will carry over its parent company's efforts...

Serena, the issue with drainage is internal to the soil-- whether the topsoil can drain into the subsoil. To check this, dig a hole 12" or more deep. Fill it with water twice. The second time, measure the time required to drain the top 10". Five hours is good, ten hours is marginal or barely OK, more than that calls for raising the bed 6".

It's OK to use manure moderately on marginally- drained soils. Coffee grounds are great and probably have less total salts, but they don't add as much organic matter per unit volume because they haven't decayed at all yet. They will soon break down to a small fraction of the present volume.