Moo-Doo from Hy-Grass Farms

Flipping through my garden notes, I see that I last amended my soil in March 2010. Oops. The poor harvest of 2012 and the reading of 0 mg/L N (even on the notoriously unreliable home soil kits) corroborate this oversight. So this spring I am reintroducing serious nitrogen (I hope) in the form of manure.

Chicken manure is probably the best choice, all other things being equal, for its high N content relative to other manures. But all other things are not equal. Chickens are small and my gardens are vast. My chicken manure is too disperse to make use of on a large scale and no one locally delivers yards of composted chicken manure.

So I went with cow manure. Dairy cow, specifically. From Hy-Grass Farms in Enumclaw. Seattle is a bit far-out for them, so they referred me to their local distributor – Gary from Sayers Landscape Supplies on Rainier Ave. My call was answered immediately, and my 5 yards of Moo-Doo delivered within one hour. Wow!

Not only that, but the product looks good (and no odour!). The manure is composted with sawdust, so no big chunks of wood (or plastic) like you get with Cedar Grove compost, and only the occasional rock. It looks so good that passersby have asked for a referral – including the UPS guy delivering a package next door!

Now we just have to distribute it all before our neighbour’s grass dies under the monstrous tarp that he so generously laid out for me…