I greatly favor soilless media for conventional container culture, and manure IS soilless, but all soilless media are far from being created equal.
There is absolutely no benefit (to the plant) to be derived from manure that you cannot get from a capful or teaspoon of one of a number of micro-nutrient preparations and some soluble fertilizer. When you imagine a scale of 1-10, with 1 being growing in the ground/garden/beds and 10 being hydroponics, conventional container culture is about a 7-8. IOW, it's much closer to hydroponics than it is to growing in the ground. The best way to look at container culture nutrition is with the idea that you/we are responsible for providing all the nutrients essential to growth at a favorable level/concentration and in a favorable ratio to each other. Forget about the soil as a nutrient source.

Manure is composed of fine particles that break down very quickly. These particles clog the micro-pores in soils that are essential to good root health/function/metabolism. It is impossible to use manure or compost in conventional containers as a significant fraction of the soil and get everything (growth/fruit/vitality) from your plant it is genetically capable of producing within the limits of other cultural influences. The reason is that soils with a significant presence of manure/compost/topsoil ..... any extremely fine particulates that break down quickly, will support a significant amount of perched water (read about the science here), which occupies a saturated layer of soil at the bottom of containers. Often, with soils comprised of a high % of fine particulates, the perched water table (PWT) will be found to be greater than 6" in depth after a thorough watering. While this may not kill plants outright, it does cause the plant to go through a cycle of root death and regeneration that is extremely expensive to the plant in terms of energy outlay and lost growth potential.

Roots do not die en mass, they die incrementally, with the finest of roots - the 'hair' root, the workhorses of the plant succumbing first. If anaerobic (airless) conditions persist, as they usually do, root death occurs in increasingly larger roots. The plant, growing under considerable stress, is then required to replace the lost rootage when favorable amounts of air return to the soil, using energy that would certainly have been channeled by the plant toward an increase in leaves, fruit, branch extension, or other biomass.

This effect is not limited to only soils comprised of materials like manure or compost. For the reasons listed, most bagged soils are not good choices for long term plantings, especially if you are more interested in maximizing vitality than in the convenience of simply opening a bag.

If you are making your own soils, approach it from the perspective of long term aeration. Use ingredients that are large enough to ensure excellent aeration and drainage, a nonexistant or at least a minimal PWT, and that are also durable enough to ensure this property remains an intrinsic feature of the soil for the intended life of the planting (between full repots).

Relying heavily on materials of appropriate size like pine or fir bark and other inorganic ingredients like Turface or calcined DE (diatomaceous earth), Haydite, crushed granite or cherrystone, pumice ..... will help you build a very productive soil

Al

Find the science behind why soils of fine particulates are problematic in container culture at the link below.

Al

would be an excellent source of material to act as the base on which to build a very good soil, like the one in the middle of the picture. If you combine about 70% bark with 15% each of perlite and peat or compost, you'll have a soil that holds little or no perched water and will remain serviceable at least as long as it's prudent to go between repots.

An even more durable soil can be made

by combining equal parts of

screened pine or fir bark
screened Turface or calcined DE
crushed granite in grower size or #2 cherrystone
gypsum

For the soil you're making with the ingredients you listed, if you keep the total volume of fine particulates (peat, compost, manure) to 15% or less of the total volume of soil, you can't go too far wrong.

Al

Al

Dan

i posted more info about the experience over in the GA Gardener forum, in this thread.