Question
hi... we have an investigatory project and i really need your help. can the plant really grow healthy if we apply the liquified organic fertilizer out from cow manure? will the process of liquifying the cow manure affect its N-P-K value? if so, how much would be the value? wat would be the dosage?
the info you will give can really help me a lot.
i hope you can send it to me this thursday.
thanks a lot...

Answer
Cow manure is organic fertilizer. Liquifying it simply means mixing it with water. The process will not affect the N-P-K value, but since you are diluting it, the concentration per meassurement unit (gallon) will go down and therefore the product will contain less percentage of nutrients.

I can not tell you how much the N-P-K will go down because it depends on the N-P-K value before mixing (which with cow manure is highly variable depending on the circumstances). It depends on the diet and age of the animals, and the nature and quantiy of bedding in the mix. Also, I do not know how much water you plan to mix into the manure.

Fresh cow manure has very roughly an N-P-K ratio of 0.3-0.2-0.3. E.g a "unit" of cow manure will contain approximately 0.3% nitrogen, 0.2% phosphorous and 0.3% potassium.

A young shrub with a 3 feet branch overhang will typically have a root zone of approximately 30 sq feet. A young shrub would need to be fertilized with 2 lbs nitrogen per 1000 sq feet, e.g. for a shrub like this we would use 30/1000 x 2 = 0.06 lbs or approximately 1 ounch of nitrogen.

If you purchased a commercial 10-10-10 fertilizer, we would need 10 oz to fertilize the shrub (10-10-10 fertilizer contain 10% nitrogen so we would need 10 oz fertilizer x 10% = 1 oz nitrogen).

If you used fresh manure, which contain 0.3% nitrogen, you would need 333 oz (2.5 gallons) to properly fertilize the shrub.

If you liquify the cow manure and mix it with 9 parts water to 1 part cow manure, you have just diluted it 1:10.
This means that instead of containing 0.3% nitrogen, it would contain 0.03% nitrogen. you would then need 25 gallons of "liquified cowmanure" to provide same fertilizer value.

If you have specific cow manure available then I recommend having a test done by your county extension office to test the actual N-P-K in the cow manure instead of going with above "rough estimates".