Chicken Manure and cow manure????

I'm building my first square foot garden. Is it ok to use cow manure and chicken manure for compost mix? I purchased both (separate bags) at a big box store. I also have worm castings and 2 different soil amenders. I'm having trouble finding the different types of things that makeup the compost, even though I live in Atlanta. Thank you!

Hi,

Welcome to the forum. Chicken and cow manures make wonderful additions to the compost pile. Be advised that one big box discount store has 'chicken manure' for sale that has stamped on the bag: "Not to be used as a nutritional source". Which means it's full of filler and who knows how little manure. Which does us no good!

Compost is the most important part of the SFG method. You can find a lot of helpful ideas here:
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t7452-mel-s-mix-how-strong-is-your-backbone

Happy gardening the SFG way!

GRAMMIE2MADDIE

Have fun with your first SFG. I am a second-year SFGer and a couple of months on this forum. A great crowd here, ask any question you like and you will get answers.

Make sure your manure has been composted and ready to use. Otherwise it will need to be composted.

Kelejan

GRAMMIE2MADDIE wrote:I'm building my first square foot garden. Is it ok to use cow manure and chicken manure for compost mix? I purchased both (separate bags) at a big box store. I also have worm castings and 2 different soil amenders. I'm having trouble finding the different types of things that makeup the compost, even though I live in Atlanta. Thank you!

Grammie2maddie, have you read the All New Square Foot Garden yet? if not I would strongly recomend it. If useing 5 carefuly chosen composts from 5 different sources say composted manures, earthworm castings ect. you should not even need soil amenders. Unless you are talking about peat and vermiculite. If those two bags are something else save your money and take them back. Another thing to look out for are combination composts that contain peat it will throw of the balance of your mix. The chix manure I used was black hen it smelled pretty stronge at first but that only lasted a couple of days. I am sure there are other good brands out there as well. I would love to get my hands on some bat guano sounds nasty but I have heard it does wonders for the garden.