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Manure.

Listen up guys. I'm back.

I've been spending a lot of time reading about manure and everything I read
seems to be a bunch of crap. Some people talk about manure in terms of
pounds, Some bushels, some cubic feet and some in terms of cubic yards. I had
no conception of what this all meant. I got back an analysis of soil in a
friend's garden. It recommended to him that he add two inches of manure or
compost to his garden. He asked me how much that was. His garden is 5500
square feet in size. He figured that since 2 inches is 1/6 of a foot that he
could multiply 1/6 foot times 5500 square feet and this came out to his
needing about 900 cubic feet of manure. He called the local tool rental and
they said their average dump truck bed (6 wheeler) is 8 feet long and 6 feet
wide and 3 feet deep. 8 times 6 times 3 equals 144 cubic foot capacity for
the truck. He figures he will need 6 or 7 truckloads of manure to provide the
two inches. Any comments?

His manure spreader is 11 feet long and 5 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall and so
if he used that he would get about 137 cubic feet of manure per load and
would again need about 7 loads. Any math people available??  

When one speaks of amounts of manure, is it more proper to speak in terms of
cubic feet, cubic yards, bushels or pounds??? I think we should try to
standardize this for purposes of discussion. Also how about some comments on
how much one should add to a new garden and how exactly do you decide? The
above was determined on the basis of a soil analysis.

Meanwhile I got killed about trying to grow a pumpkin plant using 500 square
feet of space. (Recall that my garden is about 40 feet by 50 feet and I was
going to grow 4 plants.) The concensus was that I will need at least 1000
square feet per plant and even then I will have to do some pruning. Thats
what you will have to do if you are going for the gold and,as you know, I am.
It doesn't seem fair. Already my garden isn't big enough. I'm still in this
Chris. So don't start relaxing. 

The fence around the garden isn't up yet and three deer were spotted in the
garden tonight eating my winter rye cover crop, all female, if it means
anything. 

Stay tuned.

Marv in Altoona PA
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