A sign from Rosie...Gardeners HELP!!

[longshadowfarms]

I did add a secret ingredient...I heard bunny poo is fabulous fertilizer & I have two house bunnies in a large run in the basement & a shopvac that is just for bunny poo left outside the litterbox & the shopvac was about due to be emptied ssssssssoooooo oooooooooooooo oo ...lol!...She always wanted to eat those darn bunnies & I wouldn't let her...I hope she sees the humor there. ...Now ya' all keep fingers crossed my white Rosie bush thrives!

Aw, that is too cute!  I hope it grows and flourishes!  I have stayed out of this discussion because I have absolutely no luck with roses.  Mice ate 4 of my bushes this past winter   We had planned to plant Blue Spruce trees over the dogs this spring (Thor, Piper and Josh) but I have been too sick to really do much this spring so it may have to wait until next year or this fall.

[NoDogNow]

I heard bunny poo is fabulous fertilizer

I think the first back ache I ever had as a kid came from separating rosebushes.  I may be the only woman alive doesn't like to get roses. 

Did you mix the poo up with the dirt REALLY well? 

Gran would never let me just put bunny poo in her flower beds because it was too strong--super high nitogen content, I think. 

Gran used to ALWAYS make me help with her blessed rose bushes. 

I had to mix a concoction of 10 cups of rabbit poo to a five gallon bucket of potting soil.  I had to dig the new holes to begin with, line the bottoms of the holes with peat moss, then put down a layer of the rabbit poo dirt over the moss; then the root ball of the rosebush went on top of the rabbit poo dirt, more rabbit poo dirt around the root ball, a half gallon of water, then packed in solidly with the dirt that came out of the hole.  Water no more than 2x a week.  Gran's theory of the peat moss is that it helps hold a little more moisture in the roots, so you don't have to water as often, thus avoiding rose rot. 

I don't know how scientific it is, but it works. Gran's probably given away 500 rosebushes because hers are always overflowing the beds.

[newflvr]

THIS is a message I'm going to keep!!!!  I just don't have any bunny poo.  What do you all think of horse poo?? 

[NoDogNow]

Former child-slave from the garden, here:

Horse poo also needs to be mixed with the potting soil, but you can go with a 1 shovel of horse poo to 2 shovels of dirt, if you're going to use it to plant or transplant flowers.  Peat moss always recommended.

Tree can be mixed 1:1.  If tree is less than 2" in diameter, peat moss is recommended to support moisture.

FOR GENERAL PLANTING BEDS.

You can get a decent result with horse poo if you spread it THICKLY in the fall over the ground you're going to want to plant in in the spring, then cover the horse poo with several inches of straw.  Some kind of screening recommended on top of straw to keep dogs and other pests out of your planting bed.  This is how we always bedded down the garden plots in our back yard--except that sometimes it was cow poo. 

Either way, it's stinky for a few days.  Are your peninula  neighbors going to get the vapors if you put stinky poo all over and protect it with straw??

[Gypsy Jazmine]

Deena )Good Hope called me today with some good advise too...She had roses thrive in the sandy TX soil so I figured she knows what she's talking about. So, I had to dig up the bush & replant...Tomo rrow I will put down newspaper (wetted) & straw in a 3 foor circle around the bush...Also rose pellets...can't forget the rose pellets...Ty all for your help!...My plants never live so, even with the good advise, if this bush thrives I will know Rosie had a paw in it!

[GR8DAME]

My sister has the most beautiful garden that I have ever seen, outside of a magazine. She has 4 bunnies and started using it as fertilizer in an effort to get rid of the stuff. Now she swears by it, and the results speak for themselves.






And of course, a little heavenly help is always a plus.
Stella

[newflvr]

Either way, it's stinky for a few days.  Are your peninula  neighbors going to get the vapors if you put stinky poo all over and protect it with straw

Nope....the neighbors have horses and there's a horse trail across the street and behind the house.  I just have to get a muck bucket and go get it.  But the dog question....fo rgot about that!  It would be like putting chocolates in front of me and telling me to leave it....I don't THINK so!!  There's where the problem lies....   They ADORE horse poo!!!

[NoDogNow]

They ADORE horse poo!!!

They all do, Mari, they all do. 

The screen thing works a treat, though.  Papa made Gran's out of the smallest chicken wire and 1x4''s, in big 8 foot squares that he then used cross pieces to nail together to cover the whole garden plot; the flower bed screens were custom fitted to each bed.  Gran always edges her flower beds with bricks or cinder block or lava rock, or something, so it made it easy to weight the screens with the big, heavy cinder blocks on the edging.

We always had little chia-rat dogs, but my aunt didn't; and Chico the Enormous was parTICularly fond of horse poo--if he saw a wheelbarrow of it out, it looked like he'd found a tub of ice cream, the disgusting creature. But the screens foiled him every single time. If you want to compost your beds over the winter with poo/straw, I think that after a few hours of not being able to get to the poo, the boys would give up.

The hard part is getting rid of the covering straw in the spring in order to plant the beds.  Nasty, decaying, old poo stinky straw....Just how bad do you want pretty flowers??