This is another case of people (usually city dwellers) that read all these posts on the GW and over the years start to regergitate the same mythical talking points of the day. Almost everything has some form of ecoli on it, every piece of meat you ever buy has it, when heated most of it gets killed and the rest are taken care of by your white blood cells.The reason the government says give it 120 days because they are covering thier butts. Cattle farmers routinley drive the front end loader into the corral in the spring and dump a few tons of maure on the garden and then level it and plow it under and then plant thier garden.We are walking in fresh manure every day have it on our hands and pants, its floating in the air and you know what? Ill bet we are healthier than most over sensitive hypocodriacs living in the city. People Its fertilizer and humus use it if you want but there is nothing wrong with it, this is just another case of people over analyzing dirt.I wonder do city people breath without gas masks? Because they will ingest way more unhealthy things than they will by tilling in wet cow or horse s*** in thier gardens. PS I wonder what how they justify thier house pets who spread ecoli onto thier furniture when after taking a dump jump onto thier bed or sofa or carpet?

i claim to be no expert as to what comes out the other end of an animal.. though i have been accused of shoveling it around a bit.. lol ... but it depends what goes in the front end .... over your multiple posts.. it SEEMS ...you always talk of ONLY spreading it around ... though that is one way of doing it.. you might want to consider using a garden fork to work it in a bit .... throwing down what you call a gob ... and then forking the soil a bit to loosen it... and work it in .... frankly .. if it smells to rich .. it probably isnt aged well enough to use in the garden ... aged 'nure is more of a compost .. rather than just a pile of poop ... or what you call.. a GOB ... sooo .. in summation your honor .. if your olfactory senses are over-whelmed.. it is probably not aged enough ... [of course.. since you own the stinkee animal.. perhaps you wouldnt be offended by the smell as much as us.. lol ...] i would say at least over-winter.. and probably a year ... all that said... you could start building a bed for next fall ... and work it into the soil ... letting it lay fallow .. rather than simply making a pile so as to age ... and then.. next fall.. you move everything in a current bed.. into the new bed.. and renovate the old bed ... there are many ways to do it all .. if you dont duct tape yourself into a box and not look outside of it ... ken

There is a local dairy farm about 20 miles away that has always had a nice pile of aged cow manure. I built many a bed with that stuff. But last year they wouldn't sell any. I'm afraid it's become too much of a commodity. I will call them again next spring. I compost all veg. and fruit scraps, plus coffee grounds and eggshells. My neighbor contributes their food scraps as well to my pile. But I never have enough homedmade compost. When I first started gardening here I tried to get as many compost piles going as I could and turned them often. Then I found I was spending too much time in the garden and didn't have time to "maintain" so many piles. We don't have "mushroom compost" around here, but we do have "seafood compost". There are a few facilities that take the waste from the lobster and fishing industry and compost it. Very good stuff, you can see tiny bits of shells in it. I had 12 yards delivered last year when I was building the rose garden. One fall I went to one of the coves where seaweed collects. I hauled as much as I could in trash bags in my trunk. Not a good idea as the bags leaked. I have to know when to draw the line for my garden. Standing on slippery rocks in waist-high water pulling up slimy seaweed, then having a car that smelled like the marsh on a hot day was above and beyond the call of duty. If I don't have a finished pile of compost or manure to dig from, I will buy those bags (20 lbs?) of "composted cow manure" from Walmart or Home Depot. 1/2 to 1 bag worked in to each rose hole. Probably the best thing I do is mulch with finely shredded leaves. You can scrape back the mulch and uncover dozens of worms per sq. ft. everywhere in my garden. It is a lot of work each fall, as we have to collect at least 100 bags of leaves and shred them with the riding mower, then rake them up again and haul them throughout the garden. It takes a good 2 weekends.

Cheryl, What MeMo is trying to say is that manure is best use shortly after full decomposition because by then the weeds it contains are dead. The seeds of weeds are ingested by the horses which passes through their guts undestroyed and so you will notice in fresh manure that seeds will germinate.. which is not good for soil amendment. So when the manure rots away, it produces heat hot enough to kill off these emerging weeds. (sometimes hot enough to cause spontaneous fires) Now after full decomposition, new weed seeds can resettle on the rotted manure and grow again because there'd be no heat. So in the case of manure older than 2 years, exposed outdoors, be careful that they do not contain weeds. You can do this early in the season by observing if any new seedlings grow and to break it up over severals days to kill off any germinating weeds. Ianna