Manure league table

[QuizMaster]

Can anyone help me to rank the items below, in order of how good they are?
They are available in various amounts from our locality.

Horse manure
Cow manure
Sheep manure
Contents of kitchen composter
Seaweed (but what type and what do you do with it?)
Other?

[Flo]

Click here to find useful information on how to compost seaweed for use in the garden

[Odsox]

I was always told that horse manure is best.
Cow manure is all I have ever spread on the garden
Sheep manure was always used for making liquid manure ... fill a sack and suspend in a tank of water.
Home made compost has variable fertilizer value but always make good soil conditioner (depends what you make it from)
Seaweed is very good for trace elements and can be used in many ways. Small quantities are best used as a compost additive. If you have enough just lay it on the soils between your plants and it will decompose very quickly. It's always best to play the hose over fresh seaweed for a bit to flush the salt out.

If I had the choice of a plentiful supply off your list I think I would choose seaweed top (any sort but kelp is best), followed by horse manure, mainly because fresh manure needs keeping for a year before using but seaweed can be used straight away.

[MINESAPINT]

Seaweed every time. Won't have been sprayed and has no weed seeds in it. I once grew an enormous crop of potatoes in it with the best individual potato weighing 5 and a half pounds.

Collected fresh this week:

[marshlander]

The main disadvantage of farmyard manure (cows, sheep etc,) is that is is full of annual weed seeds. The upside is that they do wonders for opening up and conditioning clay soils and helping sandy soils be more moisture retentive. Horse manure has more nitrogen but less phosphate and potash. If you're thing of digging manure in to improve the soil structure, work this into your crop rotation plan or you could make the soil too acidic. Neither has a lot of npk to start with and this mostly leaches out while it rots down before use.

Ideally you would add manure to the compost heap 1 part manure to 3 parts greenery.

Seaweed is a wonderful fertiliser with nitrogen, phosphates and a lot of potasium as well as magnesium and other trace elements. If you live by the sea and collect your own you're very lucky. Otherwise you can buy seaweed products. I would either compost it or use it to make liquid foliar feed for tomatoes, and container plants.

You can also make liquid feed fom comfrey, borage (great for this time of year if you're anything like me with huge borage plants lolloping over everthing and you want to feed hungrey marrows & squashes) and nettles of course.

Don't forget wood ash from the fire place - high in potassium loved by onion family and gooseberries/currant bushes - sprinkle dry round the plants/bushes.

You haven't mentioned Chickens! Chicken manure 4 x nitrogen, 3x phosphorus and 3 x potash as farmyard manure! It makes very rich compost and also contains magnesium, lime and sulphur.

[eccentric_emma]

i like the idea of seaweed as we live by the sea so could collect quite a bit. but unfortunately i dont have a sprinkler that i can leave on for an hour to wash off the salt!

[QuizMaster]

Right well seaweed it is then.
We live by the sea.
Sprinklers can be had in B&Q for 12.98.

That link about how to compost seaweed is most excellent. Thanks for that and for all other helpful comments.

[Peggy Sue]

Mineapint- I read you should have st least 80% manure to green stuff?

Have to say I don't exactly weigh it though

[ina]

A few rainy days would do just as well as the sprinkler...

The value of the manure depends also on what bedding had been used, and how much of it. Horse manure with a lot of wood shavings in it takes a long time to break down.