posted 7 years ago
I used a mixture of composted cow and sheep manure from Sobeys and Superstore/Loblaws when I broke ground on my garden last year, approximately 1 bag per square meter, and had limited success with my veggies but was a very dry year so even the weeds struggled. The weeds that were drought-tolerant were nearly unstoppable so if there are any lingering herbicides in the composted manure they were likely in such low concentrations that it did not seem to affect them. This year I've noticed a lot of activity in the soil while doing bed prep. I've been pulling huge numbers of sprouting seeds from the bed (radishes were left to go to seed in the bed last summer) and there are at least a dozen worms in each shovel full. I'll be amending the bed with wood/brush compost and kelp meal this year instead of composted manure but I don't think that the manure I used last year had any adverse effects on the soil, just use sparingly unless you can get confirmation, although I believe that'll be a long shot unfortunately.