I received a crazy message today while at work: "Hey Dave, do you want any of this bat shit?" To which I replied, "Absolutely!" Chef Rob Boone down at Northbrook Marketplace was doing some spring cleaning up in the old barn and collected for me a couple pounds of some magical super poo.
The site Bat Guano Products has some details about the make up of guano on their home page (note the 500lb minimum order- that's a big pile of bat crap!). After a little checking on the Google, it sounds like it has a ton of both Phosphorus and Nitrogen and is an all round amazing organic fertilizer. A thread from the Helpful Gardener details some of the benefits of such potent poo. The one post even says: "It was so highly prized by the Incas that there was a penalty of DEATH! for anyone found killing a bat." I'll have to have snopes.com check that out, but if the Incas were willing to kill over it, then it must be magical. (True: according to a BBC page cited by Wikipedia)It's raining pretty good outside right now and I'm a little sleepy from Chef Rob's amazing BBQ brisket, so the bag of bat crap is going to stay in the trunk of my car for at least a day before I figure out how best to use it. If I get off work early enough tomorrow I''ll try and get it out in the garden before I head down to south Philly to watch the Flyers beat up on the Pens. I think most of it will end up directly in the soil, and the rest in the compost pile. The BBC page linked above says that it is a great compost activator.
It also seems that there are also some precautions I need to be aware of when handling it. I read that you shouldn't handle the guano with bare hands and should avoid breathing it in in excess - both life lessons I learned long ago regarding ANY kind of excrement. I'll comply.
Thanks again Rob!
Hey Dave,
ReplyDeleteSounds like you're into some serious s---.
I've heard of people going Bat S--- but have never actually known anyone that really did go Ape s--- over Bat s---!
Be careful - this stuff sounds powerful and I would not leave it my trunk. But then someone might steal it so I sort of understand. Good call not to leave it in the RED car.
If it is at all like its' cousin chicken s--- it will be strong and could burn you and the plants. They say it makes veggies taste fowl. Wonder what the bat stuff makes it taste like - do you think there will be a sign in the sky calling attention to your garden?
Thanks for the good s--- in the blog today!
dave&jackie
dont add Phosphorus to your soil...chester county has an average of 1000ppm P per hectare soil. Plants only need 1ppm P/hectare soil. any P you add will simply run off into your GROUND WATER, or it runs off further adding to the problem of eutrophication in small streams in pa/md/del. Furthermore, if the P did not run off, its not in an available form in the soil matrix for the plants to uptake. It takes at least 2 years of microbial action to make these types of P available to plants. By that time, your garden will no longer be there.
ReplyDeleteSo you may be wondering what to use????
Use a buffered alumina-phosphorus fertilizer. It binds to P and makes it more available to plants. It dosent run off. It will not lead to eutrophication or ground water contamination if used properly.
BTW....Bat guano is full of toxic salts to plants...aerobically compost it first for best results. Bat guano is also full of human pathogens which can be transferred to your produce.....just like the outbreaks on tomatoes last year and the year before....compost your live manure for best results.
Thanks for the advice! But it's come too late...
ReplyDeleteI think fortunately there wasn't a whole lot of it in the bag after it was spread over the 180 square feet. I hope that the concentration in the soil won't be high enough to create any of the negative effects that you mentioned.
... I also really hope that you didn't just stumble on the blog in a one time breeze through. You sound much more knowledgeable than I am on these things and any advice on such things would be greatly appreciated... any desire to answer any future questions that I post?