Steer manure isn’t as helpful as you think

It seems that, in fall and/or spring, it is a common belief that steer manure is a good fertilizer for the landscape, especially for lawns. However, steer manure contains very little nitrogen — usually about 3.5% — and the nitrogen is contained in an organic compound.

This organic compound makes the nitrogen slowly available over a few years. It allows only about 10 to 20% of the total nitrogen from the manure to be available to your lawn or landscape in the first year.

When you apply steer manure to a lawn, the lawn may first turn yellow. Many people believe this is due to the manure “burning” the lawn due to a high nitrogen level or a high salt content in the manure. But most often, this is not the case.

It takes bacteria in the soil to separate the nitrogen from the organic compounds in the manure. The nitrogen is the food for the bacteria. Because the work is hard, the bacteria must steal nitrogen out of the soil to survive. This causes even less nitrogen available to the plants and causes the lawn to turn yellow.

After a week or two, the lawn starts to get green again because the microorganisms are returning the nitrogen from the manure back into the soil. This is the nitrogen that has been released from the manure.

The “borrowing” of nitrogen is a common problem with many organic gardening products. To combat this, many have extra nitrogen added. These products will have terms like nitrified, nitro or fortified on the label to show the added nitrogen.

Steer manure can also increase soil alkalinity — something we are always trying to reduce in the Antelope Valley.

Using steer manure does have some benefits, however. It can increase the organic matter of your soil, which can improve water penetration and water movement in the soil.

If you wish to use steer manure or any other organic materials, there is going to be a period of time before you start to see the results of organic fertilizers.

I am not against organic fertilizers. You just have to keep in mind the time delay for the breakdown of nutrients. Using organic fertilizers must be planned and used at regular intervals before you see problems, because you are trying to be proactive in supplying plant nutrients.

You should do the same proactive applications with traditional fertilizer, but they can be more reactive. If you have a nutrient problem, traditional fertilizers can solve them quickly, whereas organic fertilizers could take years to solve.

I have been mentioning organic compounds in steer manure, but it would not be considered “organic” when growing fruits and vegetables.

When growing plants “organically,” the fertilizer must be organic, so in the case of steer manure, the cows must be fed “organic” feed. This would make their manure “organic.”

Look for a label with OMRI — this is the Organic Materials Research Institute, which certifies products as organic.

Another by-product that can be very bad is fireplace ash. The problem with using it is the high levels of calcium carbonate. This will increase the pH of soil or make the soil alkaline.

The calcium in the soil forms a material called caliche, limestone or calcium carbonate. When your soil has a high amount of calcium in the soil, it prevents hydrogen ions from being attracted to the soil particles. This process is a buffering action.

You should be familiar with a buffering action if you take a buffered aspirin. Aspirin is an acid and it is coated with calcium, magnesium or other positively charged materials, which coat your stomach, so the acid level does not build up and cause stomach pain.

The soil in the Antelope Valley already has a high pH. The fireplace ash will increase the buffering of the soil and make your soil pH even higher.

We spend enough time trying to lower our soil pH and this is the main reason I am not a fan of using fireplace ash. On the East Coast, where the soil pH is low, fireplace ash can still be a problem.

The last garden product that may not be a great idea for your garden is wood chips from tree service companies. It seems like a great gardening product; it is organic and usually free. However, some of the wood chips may come from diseased trees and shrubs.

When you add the wood chips to your landscape, you could be adding disease pathogens, too. If there are bacterial or fungal pathogens in the wood chips, they may infect your plants.

When you buy organic products from nurseries or bulk landscape product retailers, their products are either composted, pasteurized or both to kill the disease pathogens.