Question
I am going to make a perenial and shrub bed in front of my living room window. It is surrounded by the house on one side- a driveway on another- and a sidewalk on the other two sides. Right now it is filled with backfill of sand, rocks and gravel. I am taking all of that out down to a depth of 12".The bed will be 21' by 12' by 12" deep.I will be putting in all new soil which I want to be well draining soil. I talked to my County Extension Office Master Gardener and she gave me a list of ingredients that will make well draining soil. I am going to make 9 cubic yards of soil. That will consist of 31% Top Soil- 31% Mushroom Compost- 20% Composted Manure- 5% Sand( if it comes in 40# bags) or 10% Sand ( if it comes in 20% bags) and 8% in bales of Peet Moss. From talking to people' they say that this combination of ingredients should give me well draining wonderful soil. Do you agree? If not, why? I have one concern as to the 20% of composted manure that the Master Gardener told me I should incorporate into the mix. Before I talked to her, I'd talked to another place about buying top soil by the cubic yard and they told me that they had a garden mix consisting of 50% top soil and 50% compost which included 2% pig manure.I'm going to use the formula the Master Gardener gave me and not the other one but am worried about the huge discrepancy between 20% manure in one mix and only 2% in the other. I have heard that too much manure can burn whatever is planted in it,so you can see why I am concerned.Can you tell me if there is a difference between composted manure and pig manure and is pig manure stronger than composted manure or what? I'm confused and can't go ahead spending all of the money and doing all of the work that it will take to create this soil until I'm sure that I won"t ruin it all by adding too much manure. Thank You very much for any help that you can give me.

Answer
Hi Bonnie, you're going to be using composted manure either way. If the pig manure is not already decomposed, it will be shortly after being blended with the soil. It will not burn.  You can plant in 100% manure if it's composted. Once composted, there's not much nutritional value to manure.  Usually less than 1/2 lb. of plant food per 100 lbs. of manure. It's mostly texture along with some vitamins and hormones.
The blend you have sounds fine, except you need more soil.  Nine yards is correct to fill the hole but you need the bed elevated to insure good drainage.  What if it rains for a prolonged period.  You've dug a 21'x12' bowl that may not drain as fast as it fills. Your root zone needs to be above ground level to keep air in your soil spaces, not water. Shrubs may tolerate the wet soil for a while, perennials are not as forgiving.
I'd plan on about 12 yards of soil.  Jim