A common theme from the gardening experts is a warning about plain old manure. More than once I heard or read, "There is too much salt, so it is not good for the soil."
I used it in abundance in Phoenix, thanks to some generous goats - raw. Whew. I used it around the citrus and also in a place where I grew some cactus. "You should not use it around citrus, because of the salt."
On the Net - "Using mushroom compost directly is not good because of the salt."
But on a rose forum, "My roses are not doing well. My neighbor, who uses only organic materials, has great roses. Maybe I should switch from the NPK fertilizer I am using."
The gardening industry likes dry fertilizer, because it is portable and sells for a lot of cash per ounce. The results can be instant, from fast growth to total fertilizer burn. My uncle destroyed his wife's roses by doubling the amount of powdered rose fertilizer. She was only too happy to tell everyone about it.
All those cans and bags are easily manufactured - for pennies - and sold for dollars.
Let us return to the noble earthworm, the hardest working gardener of all. He is described by one expert as a "cow grazing on bacteria." He does not like the fresh, hot stuff, a sauna for him, where he would melt. But that is the motherlode of bacteria, so he sanitizes it while growing fat and begetting thousands of descendants to carry on his work in case he is airlifted to a robin's nest for... I can't say it.
Mushroom compost is a nice, clean name for used manure and bedding scraps. The bags are cheap and easily transported. We used a bag of it to fill two holes that might have tripped up someone walking in the backyard. Digging and moving shovels of dirt would have been rather slow in dry weather. This was fast and will leave behind two areas of better soil.
I read on the Net- "Do not plant on mushroom compost - it is too salty." I did, because it was the quick solution to two grassy rows I did not want to dig up. A few bags filled in the area between the rows of mulch and newspaper.
I noticed that some plants are coming up already.
Today I will cut some hybrid tea roses and give them to our gardening neighbor's wife. She loves roses and covets our rose garden. Her husband says roses are too much trouble. They gave me the stash of newspapers to start the rose garden.
I dug holes in the lawn and planted the roses. Next I covered the area with newspapers, putting mulch on top to keep them down and to highlight the roses.
So I will give Mrs. NextDoor a bunch of roses and say, "Here are your newspapers back."
And it is true. The earthworms multiplied under the newspapers, dug and manured the soil, tunneling to help rain and tapwater down to the roots. The roses turns sunlight, water, and soil nutrition into beautiful blooms.
Without the newspaper hoard I would have had grass growing like bamboo up through the mulch and far less production from the roses.
