CPs are Carnivorous Plants. If you use the richness of the horse manure you're not likely to be able grow these as they like nutrient poor not nutrient rich soils. This richness could also cause an odor problem if it stays wet. I'm not suggesting that you use something else just be wary of the proportions.

As for the satelite dish. there was some discussion about using one of these some time ago and it may have fallen off gardenweb by now (do a gardenweb search to see if that link is still around). It think it was decided that the dish would not be much use. If you have very heavy clay soil and a low area you could just dig a hole mix some of the original soil that you dug with some of the manure/soil and some sand. this would give you a pretty good place to grow things like cardinal flower lobelia, swamp milkweed, and probably a host of native moisture loving plants.

The peatmoss is not for fertilization or aeration. It is basically just a growing medium that is very low in nutrients, acidic, and holds water very well. For those of us who who have bog gardens fashioned after true bogs peat moss is essential, as peat is formed IN bogs.

Yeha forget the satellite dish and just dig out the wet spot a lot deeper and then fill it to overflowing with peat moss and some kind of mulch.
You can use the manure too but only if you are going to use regular water type plants and not the carnivourois type.

they won't do too well in your part of the country anyway

Thanks to both of you guys for the advice. I have plenty of rich dirt with manure, and also sand. We live at the bottom of a hill, so everyone else's yard washes down to ours. LOL That was good when my brother put out grass seed and it came our way! But, it also washes all the sand in the area and sends it to our back yard.
Using the sand would actually be perfect because where I wanted to plant is where most of the sand is and I can put some in the garden and I wanted to make a sand box for the kids.
Where can you purchase large quanities of peat? All I see is small bags that would run on the expensive side.
I appreciate the advice!
Tracey (East TX z8)

You can use bales of straw too. It's cheaper than peat and one bale is a lot.
You have to get good dry straw so it will break up easily.
When you are filling your bog after it is dug out fill it to the top with water and start scooping in your different components. Like a couple shovels of dirt and manure then a couple shovels of broken straw.

Keep adding your ingredients and mixing until your fill is heaped above ground level. It's best to have a pvc pipe at the edge that goes all the way to the bottom and sticks up above the surface so you can water from the bottom up when it becomes necessary.

Hello. I took advice from this forum and made my bog garden out of a preformed pond.(The dogs wouldn't stay out of it when I had a water pond in it!!) I got a big bag of peat and some potting soil and soaked it in a wading pool. While that was soaking, I put about 3 inches of pea gravel in the bottom of the pond form, added a piece of plastic vacuum cleaner wand (to add water to the bottom of the bog) and then put all that sopping wet peat/soil into the pond, heaping it up. I put in some coleus, calla lilies, hosta and caladiums.
If it doesn't work, I'm only out about $20.