Using Animal Manures in the Vegetable Garden

I use manures in my garden. Unfortunately, especially in  the United States, there's been a lot of debate about using manures in the organic garden. Organic certification there requires:

Certified organic farmers, however, must have a farm plan detailing the methods used to build soil fertility including the application of manure or composted manure. Certified organic farmers are prohibited from using raw manure for at least 90 days before harvest of crops grown for human consumption....The U.S. regulations for organic production require that raw animal manure must be composted unless it is applied to land used for a crop not intended for human consumption; or is incorporated into the soil not less than 120 days prior to the harvest of a product whose edible portion has direct contact with soil; or is incorporated into the soil not less than 90 days prior to the harvest of a product whose edible portion does not have direct contact with the soil surface or soil particles. 

One reason for this was an engineered backlash  that argued that organic produce was food grown in manure...and that it was a health risk to eat. So organic farmers worked hard to cover themselves.

 The UK body has a different  approach:

Livestock manure can be used with the agreement of your organic CB as a supplement where the fertility building phase of the rotation is not sufficient to produce the required soil nutrient level. Where possible manures, which should normally be composted before use, should be recycled on the farm on which they were produced. If they are taken off the farm they must be used on another organic holding. Organic standards strictly control the use of brought-in animal manures from non-organic holdings - they can only be used with the permission of your organic CB and must come from extensive production systems.

In effect, what organic farmers are being forced to do is source their compost from commercial suppliers, who have a strict scientific approach to composting, rather than invest in the business, and presumed risks, of creating their own. This adds to in farm costs and the price of organic foods.

Jeff Gillman addresses this topic in  The Truth About Organic Gardening:

"'The practice of adding compost, including composted manure, to soil is a good one as long as you compost appropriately." Gillman, however, does cite a study that found that E. coli O157:H7 can live in uncomposted manure for 21 months.

Cornell University similarly argues:

Fresh manure must be used with caution in the garden because it may contain pathogenic bacteria such as E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella. Although the chance of contamination is slim, severe sickness and even death may occur if contaminated produce is eaten. To be safe, either compost your manure or apply it in the fall after harvest. Wash your hands after handling manure and try to leave at least 120 days between application of fresh manure and harvest of a crop.

The complication is really salad veg in contact with any manured soil, as well as unwashed and uncooked root vegetables, which may act as fomites for E.Coli and Salmonella.

I've always presumed  anything coming from the dirt to be 'dirty' and should be treated accordingly. 

This of course raises the prospect of to Manure Or Not To Manure (discussion thread is excellent). However, further polemics exist that argue that you should not even add animal manures to your domestic compost heap because the quality of your composting process may not be up to the sterilisation standards needed: right temperature/required time span.

However I did find this research snippet:Fate of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Manure-Amended Soil which reports:

Escherichia coli O157:H7 cells survived for up to 77, >226, and 231 days in manure-amended autoclaved soil held at 5, 15, and 21°C, respectively. Pathogen populations declined more rapidly in manure-amended unautoclaved soil under the same conditions, likely due to antagonistic interactions with indigenous soil microorganisms. E. coli O157:H7 cells were inactivated more rapidly in both autoclaved and unautoclaved soils amended with manure at a ratio of 1 part manure to 10 parts soil at 15 and 21°C than in soil samples containing dilute amounts of manure. The manure-to-soil ratio, soil temperature, and indigenous microorganisms of the soil appear to be contributory factors to the pathogen's survival in manure-amended soil.

Confused? Well the research may not be  conclusive and you'll find many variations of recommendations online about how to handle animal manures in the vegetable garden. As you know  animal manures are an efficient way to heat up a compost heap ...and do it quickly. 

• Useful resource:5 Tips for Using Manures in the Garden

But there may be a way around all this if you think your habits need adjusting.  This  approach composts animal manures alone rather than mixing them up with other stuff. And you compost very hot and very quickly. This is a variation of the Berkeley method, developed by the University of California, Berkley...but it's less labour intense. I suggest it may also be a good idea to keep a cake or meat thermometer on hand and make sure your pile registers 60 degrees Celsius. I suspect that a variation of  this technique was used by the 19th Century  French Intensive Market gardeners, although they buried their manures to compost anaerobically.

French Intensive: La culture maraîchère downunder

I is here. Yesiree.

Finally.

After a very intense period of exploration and research I'm thinking that I have discovered my preferred gardening 'model'.

What I mean by that is that I have narrowed in on the 'system' that suits my environmental context and my habits...my journey.

It has a name and history and it's  called French Intensive Market Gardening.

La culture maraîchère referred to the intensive methods of gardening developed in the urban areas of Paris from about 1850 to 1900, and often referred to in English as "French intensive gardening." It was a series of techniques developed over the years by experimentation for gardeners to produce large quantities of fresh vegetables for city dwellers. It also dealt with a major urban problem at the time - what to do with all the manure from the horses used for transportation. French intensive gardening was designed to grow the maximum amount of vegetables on the minimum area possible, since urban plots were invariably small and noncontinuous...The average Parisian market garden was between one and two acres in size, with plants grown on eighteen-inch beds of combined straw and horse manure from the stables. Although the plots were relatively small, the techniques used to attend to them were highly detail-oriented and labor intensive. In the words of one grower, "always tend the smallest amount of land possible, but tend it exceptionally well." In order to get the maximum amount of produce from a small area, many techniques were used in concert. Crops were planted so close together that when the plants were mature, their leaves would barely touch. The close spacing provided a mini-climate and a living mulch that reduced weed growth and helped hold moisture in the soil. Companion planting was used - growing certain plants together that enhance each other. [Source]

French Intensive Gardening is often referred to as 'Double Dig' but I don't do that. There's no point because I've only got sand to dig up under my shallow loamy layer. I'm finding instead that with my trusty Ho-Mi  Hoe and my  handy sieve, I can fashion a version Francais that suits Terra Australis.

French Intensive Gardening is also linked with  'Biodynamic'  gardening because it was adapted, tweaked and repackaged by people like Rudolf Steiner,  Allan Chadwick et al.  I don't respond to these later quirks much at all, so I'm very much a French classicist and my interest is anchored in 19th Century Paris.

I'm also still caught between approaches so I'm no purist. I'm eclectic. While I may be trying to talk  French, my dialect is local and 21st Century. 

For the sake of context, I'll try to list why I prefer  La culture maraîchère to other systems:

1. It relies on friable soils...and mine are sandy ++++.
2. Its primary input is horse manure ...and mine is cow and horse dung. So there's no intense investment in making (aerobic) compost as an arduous supplementary activity.
3. It is focused on making the best use of a small gardening space...and I'm gardening with marketing ambition in a suburban backyard.
4. It merges my long time interest in English Cottage and French Potager  gardens with some core, and very dedicated, polycultural  -- mixed vegetable gardening -- preferences . I'm no formalist, so mix and match suits me just fine. 
5. It is ruled by market gardening precepts so it isn't distracted by  countervailing 'food forest' and strict Permaculture shibboleths.
6. It is driven by, and committed to, the growing of annuals rather than perennials.Any perennials are espaliered or coppiced.
7. It is primarily a gardening system ruled by what's to hand and available -- horse manure -- rather than idealising inputs and paying big bucks for them. Très pas cher.

Nonetheless, I'm proceeding with a few adaptions in mind and the primary one is that the 'digging ' over of my soil is left to the critters -- like worms -- that inhabit it. I merely seek to 'scrape the surface'.

'Double Dig' be dammed. 

I also use, and rely on, sheet mulching when the French did not. But my mulch is grass clippings which begin life very desiccated anyway and break down quickly.

So I'm thinking it's coming together, so to speak, underfoot.

Before me I have this sharp learning curve as I get to know my plants in this novel Gallic environment. 

The principles in play do, however, lend themselves to adaptations. For instance their raised beds built atop manure cores remind of my own mounds built on mulch mixes...and I imported that edge, not from Paris, but  from the South Pacific.

I'm also reliant on terracotta pots for irrigation when they relied on watering cans.

They long-trench mulched vigorously with manures, when I prefer  single holes -- as I don't want to 'disturb' the ecological integrity of the beds. They used pure manure(+straw) fills when I use grass clippings, paper and manure. My French forbears and I do, however, agree that manures can be buried when still  young.

And while I'm polyculural, I'm more polycultural, in a mayhem sort of way, than they were.I can so indulge myself  because the scale of my project is smaller.

Unlike them, I keenly engineer shade as a hot weather element in the design mix.

That said there are a few attributes of  La culture maraîchère  that I still need to understand and work through.

If it supposedly uses less water than other methods of gardening, how is that water 'held' in the garden bed? What's the sponge? While the method makes weeding easy, the business of churning up the soil surely activates weed seeding. Because the soil is loose and friable, weeds may indeed be  at a disadvantage, and are easily pulled up by their roots, but there's sure to be more of them, right? Especially since I mulch with cut grass and use manures.... But then I know my own weeds and the only problematical one in this context I can envisage is the low growing chickweed. Runner grasses, the ones I abhor, won't stand a chance.

So this is  'intense' also in the sense of labour intense. If the mulch regime fails I'll be weeding more.

C'est vie

There's also these considerations to deal with, given my conditions:

The hotter the climate, the more you should consider whether or not raised beds are truly beneficial, especially with sandy soils. Sandy soils are likely to be low in nitrogen and organic matter; too much intensive digging may only exaggerate these problems. The hotter the summer climate, the faster organic matter is consumed. The more frequently you dig soils in hot summer weather, the more material you will need to add to compensate for oxidation. However, once the living mulch covers the bed, it will help to moderate high soil temperatures. In a hot, dry summer climate, the soil in a raised bed may not only heat up too much but also be vulnerable to drying out--thus negating one of the benefits of BFI. [Source]

Some useful online resources about French Intensive Gardening:

• The French Intensive, Double-Dug  Raised Bed Vegetable Garden -- useful summary.
• French Market Gardening (Published 1909/full text). Important English reference .
• French Intensive Gardening: A Retrospective -- handy over view but focused on Alan Chadwick's adaptions.
• French Market Gardens - La Culture Maraîchère -- good historical review.
• GARDENS : In Good Tilth : How the Biodynamic French Intensive Metho... -- From "Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape--Naturally," by Robert Kourik, 1986 by Robert Kourik.Useful provisos.Maybe the method isn't for all situations.
• The Biodynamic French Intensive System --A Photo Gallery of Alan Ch...-- enough musings to charm you big time.
• Intensive Culture of Vegetables on the French System by P. Aquatias (1913)
• French method of intensive cultivation and asparagus forcing : a treatise on the French method of gardening (1910) by H.Herrman.
• Best book I've read:The Market Gardener: A successful grower's handbook for small-scale organic farming by Jean-Martin Fortier. Fortier's book encouraged me to garden francais.

Market Cart

It wasn't a great day at the markets yesterday (they're monthly) but I'm proud of my snazzy market cart which is being renovated.

Looking gooood.

It used to be a bike cart and I'd carry my community artz workshop wares around from school to school with me peddling up front.

Since it has been used to ferry my canoe to the seashore.

Now it's a perfect produce market artefact.

What style, eh?

And, of course, there's no show without Punch!

For those who pursue the market route I tell you the challenge of picking and presevering the stuff is a big one, even by day-before standards. I made a mistake yesterday and wrapped the greens in wet paper as an experiment. Thinking: I'd get horizontal display.

Did not work and wilting was a big problem, esp with the young greens

Best practice so far (from my limited experience) is to:

1. Pick early in the day of harvest.
2. Immediately place the cut stems in water -- just like flowers in a vase. &/or refrigerate/cool storage overnight.
3. Always shade your produce. 
4. Use an atomiser spray to water the plants when on display.

Rather than weigh out and such I sell in $2 lots -- so I have freedom to decide on what goes in the batch or bundle.

Since harvest is such a fickle schedule -- I'm trying to promote drop-by market days from home. Market one Saturday-open garden day a fortnight later....'pick while you wait'.

To market, to market....

Major renovations...

I've been digging...and planting because I've been driven by a new commitment: market gardening. As I plan to do the local monthly community markets selling some of what I grow, the garden now has a entrepreneurial purpose. So it has to deliver a quotient of vegetables. 

Be productive. Be predictable and reliable. Be niche oriented.

I'm thinking through my 'business plan' options and as well as selling at these monthly events I may run market days from  home on the other fortnight. People can drop by and shop.

Yesiree...I've been doing my homework. Reading up. Studying experiences of urban agriculture and micro farming,etc.

I'm convinced that it's do-able as various scenarios are possible...and work elsewhere.

Not that I plan to commit to  a new profession at my age, but my retail savvy flags the options.

I'm also thinking of offering to grow-to-order and ring+drop-by-+-harvest without taking on the responsibilities of something like Community Supported Agriculture.

In the genre of contemporary market gardening there are many retailing models.

But it's still early days and I am a hobbyist.I look to the marketing aspect as a means to network in my community and supplement my income while promoting environmental vibes.

But the focus is a delight and draws me to the garden more assiduously as though I have a part time occupation. A routine. 

This means that I have become more demanding of my patch.I'm asking more of it...and I expect more.  So I got busy and remade some of the layout.

• I narrowed the paths and widened the beds in order to get more growing space. The soil shifting has indeed expanded my planting area. The much narrower paths are now trenches because they are dug deeper than before so that they act like valleys. Foot traffic compacts the earth and water is slower to dissipate. That's a plus for me.
• I expanded my mounds and planted them out with a mix of vegetables as well as the tubers. This is still an experiment  but now I have 3 gardens: (1) garden beds (my original garden--number:5); (2)garden mounds (my recent experiment);and the new ground (3) mounds and ridges constructed from dirt thrown atop  twigs and branches half way to  Hugelkultur mode..
  
• I incorporated waffle  grids in my planting habits. Waffle gardens were developed by the Zuni of New Mexico (picture right) as a means to farm in very dry conditions. Since we are officially 'in dought' and I forever have water issues,  I adapted the method to my own garden beds. I now sow direct into the ground by first scraping out a waffle depression. then border  it with soil and mulch. There's no over all design grid -- not yet anyway -- but I expect I'll customise as I explore this approach further. The compartmentalisation suits me. It's also risk free as I have, afterall, such sandy soils....
• I mine my chook pen. Since I've been creating new beds --requiring 'mounds' of dirt --I had to get my soil from somewhere. Fortunately my chook pen is large and I've always wondered how to better harvest all the inputs I feed the chickens. So I take soil from the pen and put it on the garden. My chook pen is a  mine site. What better way to harness all that chook poo? It's sandy ++++ so it's an easy pick up and deliver. The chickens don't mind the crevices that are opening up at their feet. I'm even thinking of digging a well there. 
• I sift sand and cow manure together before throwing it on the beds and mounds. It is not a fun task breaking up and sifting cow  poo through a sieve, but since my 'dirt' is sterile sand I try to merge manure and sand together on a 5o:50 recipe. Besides my keeness for   honey holing  I suspect I've found a way to quicken the transition from sand to loam in situ. This approach seem more efficient than waiting on layers upon layers of mulched grass clippings to break down.I still mulch, but I now have a Plan B.