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In Today’s article we will look into 5 interesting gardening ideas and hacks on how to use cow dung or any animal manure for that matter. Questions like: Can I use fresh cow dung on my plants and few useful gardening hacks on using fresh cow dung as fertilizer, sun dried or dehydrated cow dung for plants and more.
We all know that Cow dung is one of the best organic natural fertilizer for plants. Cow manure is packed with quality major and minor nutrients required for plant growth that is NPK – nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium and other trace elements. Roughly the NPK value of decomposed cow dung is NPK – 3:2:1.
Now, Lets Begin with our 5 interesting and useful questions on the use
of cow dung, horse dung or any animal manure.
- Can we use Fresh Cow dung on Plants?
This is the most important and commonly asked question on cowdung. Cow dung can be either:
– Fresh Cow dung,
– Sun Dried and Dehydrated cow dung,
– Aged or Partially decomposed dung and
– Completely decomposed cow dung manure which is commercially sold by many companies like this one. We will discuss on these one by one and by the end of the video, you will know which is best for your plants!
Fresh Cow poop should never be applied for your plants, because it not only
stinks but contains high levels of ammonia and salts which can burn
your plants. It also contains harmful microorganisms like e coli which are
harmful to plants and humans. Plus it also contains weed seeds which can
produce a lot of weeds or unwanted plants in your garden.
If you have fresh cow dung, you can use it in many ways and follow few simple hacks.
4. Convert Fresh Cow dung to Aged Cow dung: Yes the next better option to use is an aged cow dung atleast 6 months old. Simple hack is just dig a hole in your garden, or if you do container gardening, take a large container with garden soil and dig a hole at least 4 to 6 inches deep and pour in the fresh cow dung and cover it with garden soil. Leave it to age for atleast 6 months.
3. Another simple garden hack on using fresh cow dung or horse dung is: Dig a hole between two plants and bury fresh cow dung atleast 4-6 inches deep and should not be in direct contact with roots, this way the manure becomes a gradual fertilizer around the plant and is not in “direct” contact with the roots to burn the plants. The only draw back of this hack is, it cannot be used in container gardening, unless it’s a large container. And one more thing: you can also use sun dried cow dung for this hack. We will talk about this next.
2. Dehydrated Cow Dung: This in simple terms means dehydration – meaning removal of water from it. This is done in two ways – the desi method is just sun dry it for few days and dehydrate it. This process of dehydration specially the machine processed method which uses heat to dehydrate reduces the harmful microbes and also ammonia and salt content to a certain extent. This dehydrated cow dung is light weight and can be used on most plants. But use it in smaller amounts or better avoid it for young plants and seedlings.
- Composted
or Fully Decomposed Cow dung: If you drop the cow dung into the process of
composting, the final product you get is the best and safe organic fertilizer
for your plants. When you compost cow manure, you get several benefits like the
harmful ammonia is eliminated, weed seeds in the soil are destroyed and it also
make your soil well draining and well aerated plus its moisture holding
capacity is greatly improved. The only problem is it’s a bit expensive
specially from a reliable company. This type of cow dung is the safe and best
option for plants and can be applied either by mixing with potting soil in
about 20 to 30 percent proportion or It can also be applied once in a month on
the top soil after raking or tilling the soil.
You can find links to purchase these online from below.
PURCHASE LINKS:
You can also watch a detailed article on Goat’s Dung and using fresh goat.
