Organic Farm Manures are natural products used by farmers to provide food (plant nutrients) for the crop plants. Organic materials derived from plant residues, human and animal wastes which are used as fertilizer in agriculture. Manures contribute to the fertility of the soil by adding organic matter and nutrients, such as nitrogen that are trapped by bacteria in the soil.
Types of Organic Manure
Animal manure
Compost manure
Plant manures
Sources of Manures
The following are the sources of organic manure
- Cattle shed wastes dung, urine and slurry from biogas plants.
- Human urine, town refuse, sewage and sludge.
- Poultry jitter, droppings of sheep and goats.
- Slaughterhouse wastes bone meal, meat meal, blood meal, horn and hoof meal, Fish wastes.
- Byproducts of agro industries oil cakes, bagasse and press mud, fruit and vegetable processing wastes.
- Crop wastes like sugarcane trash, stubbles.
- Water hyacinth, weeds and tank silt.
- Green manure crops and green leaf manuring material
Uses of Organic Manure
- Organic manure helps to improve the soil, tilth and aeration.
- Increases the water holding capacity of the soil.
- Stimulate activity of micro organisms that makes plant food elements in the soil readily to crops
- Improves on the soil structure so that it holds more nutrients become more fertile.
- Animal manure encourages soil microbial activity which promotes the soil’s trace mineral supply improving plant nutrition.
- Organic manure contains some nitrogen and other nutrients that assist the growth of plants.
- Carbon dioxide released during decomposition of organic manure acts as fertilizer in the soil.
- They provide organic acids that help to dissolve soil nutrients and make them available for the plants.
Steps to prepare Compost Manure
- Make slurry of the cattle dung with water.
- Prepare 6 layers of organic wastes plant residues, sweepings from the cattle shed, waste fodder, dried plants stalks and leaves.
- Cover the layer with urine earth and cattle dung slurry.
- Add 5 to 10 kg of super phosphate for every 10 tons of organic wastes.
- Repeat the process of putting such layers till the pit is full.
- Close the pit with urine earth, waste fodder and then heap the soil till it gets convex shape (about 1 to 1.5 above the ground) so that the rainwater rolls away.
- After six months compost is ready to apply to the fields.