I'm in Santa Cruz, CA where it only rains six months of the year. My diverse orchards are on
drip systems, and I do fertigate, but last year I started dumping fresh horse manure on my
trees also. I'm on top of a ridge, and there is no vehicular access to the trees, so I hand carry 5 gallon buckets of my neighbor's fresh horse dumplings--diverted from the dump in a recycling cart on wheels--down to deposit within the dripline of each tree. This is getting difficult as I am approaching 70. On the downside of each tree at the dripline I installed a chickenwire foot-high
fence to reduce the effects of gravity and
chicken scratching. Since I've been doing this for a year, it seems the trees can handle the raw manure, which was an original concern. Being a true
permie, I wanted to avoid the intermediate step of composting if possible--too much work. Then, I read recently about nutrient volatility and I'm afraid that the fresh manure nutrients I dump in the summer just dry up and float away. If this is true, I suppose I
should only dump this free gold in the winter, when rain will send the nutrients down instead of up. Any suggestions on this?