[Jeannine Anne]
What kind of manure exactly? How long has it been sitting,
composting, when you use it? Is it like a year old or more?
Or is it delivered fresh a week before people start using it?
(Horse, rabbit, llama, and alpaca start out loose with lots
of air space. Cow and poultry tend to cake and have about
as much air space as mud when wet. So you need more peat,
or leaf mold, coir, etc, with cow or poultry manure than you
do with the horse manure and so on, to keep it loose when
watered.)
Aside from the initial mixture, one thing you can do is pile up
layers of straw and manure in fall, to get it a foot deep. This
will protect the soil from compaction over the winter. In spring
you can just turn it under and plant. (You may need to add some
dolomite lime, etc, depending on soil pH, how much calcium and
magnesium the native soil under the raised beds has, etc. A soil
test should tell you that.)
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