Poop and My Garden Don’t Mix

So I have this weird germ phobia about poop and pee.  Regardless of how many people say that urine is sterile (blah, blah, blah) I have this issue with public bathrooms.  So last year when I finished building my herb garden, I called my grandmother and said “Ok now what do I put in it?”  She stated soil and manure.  When she said manure, I said, “Let me get this straight…..So you want me to put cow crap in with the vegetables I am going to eat?!??  Umm…negative.  I don’t give a crap (no pun intended) whose behind it is, I refuse to add cow poop to my [vegetable] herb garden?!?”  I could not fathom my green peppers soaking up the nutrients and moisture of a cow’s download.  So I chose mushroom compost instead.  I had to pick the lesser evil and I felt that rotten mushrooms is at least a vegetable and not something that comes out of an animal’s ass (sorry had to say it).  Skip forward to yesterday (almost a year later).  I was at a garden center talking to a horticulturist and happened to bring up the subject about manure.  He said, “Well, cows eat nothing but grass, which is 95% water so you are technically putting mostly water back into your garden as well as the nutrients from the solids of the grass.”  He also reminded me that cows have 1 stomach and 4 digestive compartments (5 “stomachs” total) so its basically processed grass.  For some reason, it started to make sense to me although I still felt it was disgusting.  Nonetheless, I decided to turn a new leaf this year and finally add cow manure to my garden…but not my herb garden.  For the herb garden, I still use mushroom compost and for my non edible garden, I use cow manure.  Needless to say, putting it in the garden wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I still feel a little icky when I come in the house knowing that I have been digging in cow crap.  Who knows, maybe I will one day add it into my herb garden, but for right now…ummm negative.