Last year was my first year gardening in raised beds. I filled the beds with a mixture of native soil (clay), compost (till it ran out), and horse stall sweepings from a friend's barns. There was quite alot of wood shavings in it. I did not have alot of trouble with weeds, though I think this had been piled up for "awhile". However, I believe the wood shavings tied up the nitrogen in the soil for that first season. I finally resorted to Miracle Grow to get a crop. By this year, it was all nicely broken down and I had a perfectly wonderful garden. Through a soil test, I learned that my soil is low in nitrogen to begin with, so maybe the shavings were less of a factor than I originally believed. At any rate, I would use it again for the way it conditioned my horribly sticky, tight clay soil. By spring it was positively loamy, with a minimal number of clods in it. I think what I learned is that when you're using manures, time is your best friend.

That's great. The most important thing is to get some -ANY - compost into that soil. That's more important than what kind. One thing I wanted to say while reading through this thread is that composting tends to equalize inputs toward a common endpoint. Although there can be some differences in the final NPK based on the inputs, differences in ingredients will be muted somewhat in the final product. The quoted "Dairy Cow manure at 25.15.25 and Steer manure at 70.30.40" (presumably NPK based on dry weight) will be much less drastic of a difference in the resulting compost. Not only that, but NPK is not the most important thing about compost - it is much more of a soil texture improver than a fertilizer, hence the importance of using any compost rather than none. Actually the amount of organic matter can vary a lot too, depending on how much extraneous soil, etc. is mixed in. Cheaper compost tends to have more of that. Not to discourage you from using cheap bagged products - they do have a place especially when you need a lot. You might consider a pickup load or a truckload if you have a large area to amend.

Sounds perfect to me rrtex. With the amount of the supply that your describe, I think that I would do both. Apply and till in a generous amount in the garden and add some to the compost piles too. I am really well pleased with a similar approach that I have used, except that it was using horse manure (composted but not that old), along with my other amendments of shredded oak leaves, home made compost and fall greens that grew, mowed, mulched and turned under. I would expect that you would also be well pleased. Bill P.

Sigh...one horse poops approximately 50 pounds of manure and pees 6-10 gallons of urine a day. I go through approximately 2000 pounds of bedding a month. Add in a little uneaten hay . My teeny, tiny operation has a max of 5 horses stabled 12 hours a day. You can do the math. A couple tons of month is nothing in the large scheme of things agriculture. I'm not even on the radar screen to be a permitted operation! You can also rest assured that while my compost heap is not "properly managed" I'm still one of the few people I know that manage it at all! I have absolutely nothing against science, I just think it needs to be relevant if we are going to trumpet it. Nor am I "jealous" of my boutique composting friend--knowing how hard he works I still question whether he's going to have a viable product at $16 a bag! lonmower, never fear, my "less than optimal" compost (and considering the temps I get it IS compost and not rotted manure) is being used in my gardens and others and is much appreciated! I just don't appreciate this constant drum beat that I'm "doing it wrong" when I get great results that are better for my situation than if I did it "right." (And if you consider how my manure management works within the scheme of how I manage my farm I'm knocking it out of the park!) At the end of the day it needs to be repeated that compost is not fertilizer and using fertilizer type measurements to base a quality analysis isn't necessarily that meaningful.