Fabulous fumier

Why is called fumier? I'm sure it must be because a big pile seems to smoke (fumer) on a chilly morning. Actually, it's steaming from the heat generated by frenzied bacterial fermentation feasting on all that carbon and nitrogen and breaking them down into the perfect plant nutrients.

See that huge, beautiful, downright voluptuous pile of cow manure in the centerfold photo above? Normandie is full of piles like that. During winter, almost every field has one at its edge, a huge windrow of organic money in the bank, often 12 feet tall and fifty feet or more long. The piles grow in stature as the winter wears on because the farmers haul the manure out of their dairy barns (see photo below left) where they keep their cows warm and toasty and out of the weather and muddy fields.


When I first saw all those manure piles, I thought that as a gardener I was going to be in hog--or well, cow--heaven. With so much manure around, surely our farmer neighbor would be more than happy to offload some of it on me.

I couldn't have been more wrong. All French farmers cherish their winter manure production as a fertilizer to spread on their fields, which, in a perfect cycle, are used to grow grain and silage for their dairy herds. Cow manure in Normandie, it turned out, was literally priceless. I ended up having to call a landscaper for a delivery of composted horse manure and flax hulls (from the blue flax used to produce linen, a major crop in my corner of Normandie), in order to have my own dark, rich pile to draw from.

Perhaps it's because I grew up with horses and had to much out the stalls for all of my childhood that I learned to appreciate manure so much. (I know, a reasonable child would have reacted by hating the mere sight of the stuff, let alone the smell.) Being an outdoors, solitary sort of kid, I observed early that everything grew lusher and greener around the manure pile. When I planted my first vegetable garden at the age of 17, manure was the first thing on my agenda. I wheedled some out of the neighboring farmer, who actually couldn't figure out why a young hippie girl would want some of his manure.

But here in France, I'm among my own kind. The French are as impassioned--or even more so--about the magic of manure than I. On a drive through the countryside in spring you will see literally every potager and flower bed top-dressed with the stuff. Not only private individuals, but even municipalities use it. All the roadside plantings, parking islands, and public spaces are coated with aged manure in preparation for spring growth. Even here in Paris you see manure used in public spaces!

Although I gather there's a recent E. coli scare in the US about using manure, I put about as much credence in that as the Salmonella paranoia about eggs. I still make my mayonnaise with a raw egg yolk, and I will always use manure in my garden. As long as I know where my eggs and manure come from, I'm safe, secure, and happy. And I'd much rather take my chances with vegetables grown with the manure of my neighbor's cows than with some petrochemical brew of synthetic fertilizers.



In short, manure is good for whatever ails your garden. It adds not only a shot of readily available nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus to your soil, but adds enormously its organic content. And as it continues to be broken down by soil bacteria, manure provides a buffered, slow-release feed to your plants that can't be washed away by a heavy rainfall like a chemical fertilizer can. Best of all, manure feeds your soil, thus allowing your soil to feed your plants. That old saw from organic gardeners simply means that you are feeding and enriching the population of beneficial bacteria in your soil, which make nutrients available in forms plants can utilize.

There's always a lot of brouhaha about fresh manure and how it will burn your plants. I've used fresh manure with great success for decades. Its main disadvantage is that it is difficult to handle. Especially if it contains a lot of straw, it is chunky and must be forked under, rather than mixed into, the soil. But unless you wrap your plant's roots or sow your seeds directly into the fresh stuff, you'll be just fine. The big advantage to fresh manure is that it contains the full load of immediately available nitrogen in ammoniac form.

If you want to compost your manure before using it, it's best to put something waterproof under the pile to prevent the nutrients from leaching down and out. Also, cover the pile with a sheet of plastic, weighted down at the edges, to protect it from rainfall, which likewise will wash out the soluble nitrogenous compounds. A pile of pure manure mixed with some straw will break down very quickly.

However, if you get your manure from a horsebarn where it is mixed with a large quantity of wood shavings, it will take a lot longer because of the huge proportion of carbon in the shavings. Incidentally, manure which is mostly wood shavings should not be used fresh. In the short term, it is nitrogen-poor because of the overproportion of carbon in the wood, and thus will actually rob your garden soil of nitrogen while it breaks down.

Manure from different animals varies in its relative nutrient content. Horse manure is very rich in nitrogen, but low in potassium. Cow manure is my favorite, because it is the most balanced between the three major nutrients of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Plus, if it is mixed with straw, the straw provides an extra dose of potassium (great for fruit trees and leafy vegetables). Sheep and goat manures are very nitrogen rich, as is rabbit. Poultry manures are extremely high in nitrogen and do have a possibility of burning. However, the most awesome sweet corn I ever grew was when I spread a layer of manure from my henhouse over the corn patch, and punched holes through it to plant the corn. Hog manure should not be used as it may contain some pathogens capable of infecting humans. Besides, it just smells too bad.

It's a big joke between Denis and me about how rhapsodic I wax about manure. He likes to tease me by pointing out all the most magnificent piles as we drive through the countryside--piles I know I can't get my greedy paws on. Ah, manure! It's great stuff when you can get it.

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