Super Poop

My south Tampa gym, Joe Abraham's Fitness Center, is right across from a pesticide free stable, Sail Away Farm  (813 835 7227) that gives away free horse stall sweepings, of which a LOT has been added to my yard here since 1999. But after today I am also fond of what I have for years called their "Super Poop", scraped right off the concrete grooming platform into big plastic buckets there along with horse hair and hoof trimmings, both pure keratin protein that are very rich, slow release sources of natural nitrogen. Lots of urine too. Over the years I've used it to mainly to brew a potent manure tea in  a 55 gallon barrel, but several months ago I alternated layers of it with chipped tree trimming mulch in a 50 gallon plastic drum I scavenged years ago and that has many dozens of holes drilled into the sides. I kept the drum's lid on though at times  remembered (not often enough) to remove it before a rain. I've given it a few 5 gallon buckets of kitchen graywater. It has been in full sun all this time beside the henhouse/grape arbor. Today I was DELIGHTED to remove from that barrel a lovely smelling and feeling moist compost teeming with red wrigglers that I used to replace tired old sandy "soil" in a baby pool-based Water Wise Container Garden. I planted some Kentucky Blue bush beans, fairly old seeds.....I am anxious to see the growth of this and subsequent crops over the next year.

Ask your neighborhood stable (you might be surprised to see how many there are!) about their equivalent of "Super Poop" and try one or both of these approaches, plus as a side dress for super hungry plants.

                                                                   John