Right I'm getting some very conflicted stories about horse poo and am now confused
I can not get hold of cow manure but have found a riding stables that has loads of well rotted manure. I have just spoken to one chap down the allotment and he said ooo yea get as much of that as you can it's great stuff. Then spoke to another gardener and he said I would not touch it with a barge pole and make sure it does not have wood chippings in or it will spoil the soil and you will not be able to grow anything on it.
What are your veiws please and experiancies with it
Jim
The manure is good. Wood chips not so good. If it's mixed with straw even better. Horse dung was all I could get hold of for many years. I used it with great results. If there is a down side it's that quite a few weed seeds pass through a horse and end up on your plot. OK if you keep on top of them. All the dung I got was fresh so I let it stand for at least 6 months. It heats up pretty well so no doubt many seeds in it are killed off anyway.
Don't be put off using it. If it's for free, get all you can.
Quote from: kenkew on February 19, 2008, 14:27:55
The manure is good. Wood chips not so good. If it's mixed with straw even better. Horse dung was all I could get hold of for many years. I used it with great results. If there is a down side it's that quite a few weed seeds pass through a horse and end up on your plot. OK if you keep on top of them. All the dung I got was fresh so I let it stand for at least 6 months. It heats up pretty well so no doubt many seeds in it are killed off anyway.
Don't be put off using it. If it's for free, get all you can.
so if it had wood chips should i leave well alone
I would get as much as you can! Even if it has wood chips in - they eventually rot down! I believe that there is a small difference but I have used both with no obvious disadvantages. In fact last year I had woodchips and that did very well all round. It seems to be finer in texture as well with less weed seeds!
As a soil improver and food for plants you can't beat it!
Some may knock it - but it has been around for centuries and it is still the number one food for plants and soil improver.
Good luck with your collection!
Old Bird ;D
Hi Jim
I found this article you might find interesting reading 8)
http://www.allotment.org.uk/articles2/Horse_Manure_Does_It_Have_Any_Uses.php
"One problem with using horse manure to fertilize ground is that many people use sawdust or wood chips as bedding in horse stalls. When the stalls are cleaned, the dirty sawdust or wood chips as well as the manure are removed. While the horse manure itself is a good fertilizer, the sawdust and wood chips are not crop friendly. That's because when wood breaks down in the soil a nitrogen deficiency occurs, which stunts the growth of crops. To combat this problem, a nitrogen fertilizer can be added to the soil after horse manure is spread on it; or a nitrogen fertilizer can be added to the horse manure and sawdust or wood shavings mixture before being added to the soil".
I stand corrected! Never noticed the nitrogen missing? Maybe i don't apply the manure thickly enough?
Old bird
:o
Having posted that, my friend only uses her horse manure with sawdust/woodchips and her produce looks fine ::). So I think it's a case of make up your own mind ;D
Whilst it may not be as convenient with limited space, can you not just leave the manure with wood chips longer before using? Once it's broken down, it's broken down...
if you can go and help yourself to horse poo, I'd go for it! I got some last year from a local stables and because I was left to my own devices I poked about and found the well-rotted bits in the pile and bagged up about 15 bags full of really good stuff: crumbly, dark brown and full of worms.
this year, a neighbour was offering a truck load of bagged horse poo for a fiver, but it's rubbish in comparison: just grass and full of seeds â€" our site is now full of plots that have a nice thick layer of germinating muck ::)
if the muck is well-rotted and not full of straw or woodchip, get as much as you can!!! if it does have straw and woodchip in it, you can always build yourself a nice pile and leave it to rot for next year.
On average, a 455kg (1000lb) horse generates 9 tonnes of manure each year! :o ::) ::) :o
That's alot ;D
Lauren - you are a mine of useful information. Who do you think worked out how much a horse poos!
Old Bird
;D
I'm a devotee of horse poo ( did I really just type that - checks to see no-one in the office can see the screen)
The best option is to go to a stables where they let you go and dig out your own & as someone has already said, dig down and get the older stuff & if you can get to where you are slicing out turves of the stuff, you have hit black gold.
If you're not to pernickety & it's not as well rotted as you'd like, throw propriety to the wind & pick out more nuggetts than chippings - good gloves are a bonus.
If neither of those are possible, then just bag it up and make your own heap, cover with black plastic or put in a dalek compost bin & let it rot down for a few months. If you can get a goodly heat, it will generate it's own heap and promote rotting quicker.
Short answer - get some in, it will be useful if not now, then later.
Happy shovelling
Quote from: Old bird on February 19, 2008, 15:21:51
Lauren - you are a mine of useful information. Who do you think worked out how much a horse poos!
Old Bird
;D
The poor devil who has to shovel the stuff everyday I suppose ;D
Victorian gardens ran on horse muck and they didn't do so badly. It's true that sawdust soaks up nitrogen as it rots, but horses pee a great deal of the stuff. It gets into the soil eventually, and it won't wash out as fast. So don't get too het up about it.
Grab all you can the smell will tell you how fresh it is. If it has a strong odour then leave it to break down before using if not then use straight away. Don't worry about the sawdust/woodchips causing nitrogen immobilisation the combination of manure & urine will provide more than enough nitrogen to compost it & feed the soil.
You can never have enough manure.(http://www.smileyhut.com/silly/horse.gif) (http://www.smileyhut.com)
Stop the panic over the sawdust and shavings nonsense. That's propaganda spread by the horticultural industry to stop you using the stuff. They lose a lot of money every time you don't buy nicely wrapped products. There is a minuscule amount of truth in the fact that the lumps of wood if fresh and uncontaminated will extract some nitrogen from the soil. BUT. woodchips soaked in horse shit are saturated in nitrogen and cannot possibly deplete the nitrogen from a nitrogen depleted soil because the soil does not have any nitrogen and the wood chips do. YES!
No way would I leave horse manure for 6 months before using it either. By then all you've got is compost. I've been shoveling the stuff most of my life, tons and tons of it and have never seen anything but a dramatic improvement in both crops and soil.
There is some more nonsense doing the rounds about the manure burning the crops. Show me the proof.
9 tonnes a year? Now I know why my daughter has lost weight since owning a horse :) That reminds me must ask them to bring me a few more bags.
I leave fresh horse manure for 6 months because it's a darn sight easier to spread more evenly when it's dryer, and it's still manure and still steaming after 6 months. ...and I've been shovelling the stuff for years too. I garden in the wet mud of Flanders, so dryer suits my ground more so than wet manure.
I've always had my manure mixed with straw which I've always found a perfect mix. Never had wood mixed so I can't be scientific about it's qualities, but given the choice, I'll take it with straw, thank you.
Manure with straw probably holds a lot more water than the woodchip variety. In London there is the choice of take it or leave it so I take it. Straw is difficult to manage at the stables particularly when most of the staff seem to be in the 12-14 age group and the straw all comes in giant bales nowadays.
When I visit the stables I always select a good part of the pile and dig into the oldest stuff available but sometimes there is only really fresh stuff and i find that if stored in bulk sandbags for about 6 weeks even this is fine and crumbly. My stockpiles rarely live longer than 8-10 weeks before being deployed somewhere.
What I would really like to know is where does it all go?
Ha! Ha! That's a good point! I must have added tens of tons of the stuff but where it all ends up is another thing!
Hi all,
I've found this thread really useful - I have a huge pile of manure on my new allotment which the older guys advised me not to use as it was full of wood chips. They said it would 'knacker' (good old geordie word!) the soil and attract beatles - but even if it did - they'd just wander off surely?!!
Anyhow, I think I will try it bit by bit and see how it goes
Sheddie
Several years ago used rooted wood chips and saw dust on the bottom half of my plot result - nothing- yep nothing grew, No cabbage, sprouts, beans not even weeds. I was left with a plot of bare soil.
Great thread. Two weeks ago my significant other gave me a lorryload of horsesh*t with straw as a late birthday present ("You talk it half the time, so now you can fork it" was the message). It got dumped just where I was planning to have a shed!
I've since spread it over a couple of beds prior to digging in but am cautious about speading too much too soon - as I'm already having to plan my planting rotations around it.
I understand that raspberries and gooseberries and rhubarb like heavily manured soil but that parsnips and onions are less tolerant. My plan was to try a dozen autumn raspberry canes in one of the beds, courgettes in another, to mulch my rhubarb with some but to hang back on spreading the rest for a while (it SEEMS well rotted to me but what do I know? How do you tell? pH testing or what?)
I'd be grateful for folks' advice on whether or not I'm being stupidly cautious or stupidly reckless!
Heap it up on your rhubarb ThomsonAS. Parsnips and carrots have a tendency to split and become multi legged when grow in rich soil, which is why you don't normally manure the beds for them, you will still get a crop it just won't be best in show. It also depends on your type of soil. We use horse manure at the lottie to break up the heavy clay and at home to bulk up the sandy soil.
If anything, I find I end up with too much nitrogen in the sandy soil flower beds & supplement with BF&B.
Hi ThomsonAS
Lets try again! Hit the wrong button!
To tell if horse manure is well rotted! You can generally tell if it still has obvious straw content. Also does it still have worms in. Well rotted manure is just a glorious nearly black soil which has no visible worms (they work their way upwards and can only be found on manure that is still "raw") Also well rotted manure has no distinctive smell.
On another thread - the hate Tesco thread! - the reason why we don't all get into discussion about Northern Rock - most of us don't understand what is going on and hate the thought that we the tax payers are paying for something that we don't understand and really, to a point, don't care about!
What a wonderful birthday present your significant other gave you!
Old Bird
;D
It's been said not to get too worried about adding horse muck....I agree with that. If you got it, (lucky you) USE it!
Someone mentioned onions...get hold of chicken s*it...leave it to cool off in a heap for a year then put lots on...lots! Turn it in lightly....you'll have good onions!
Good point about the wood chips. I used a wood chip mulch for my garden then noticed that a lot of the plants, the climbers especially, ended up with a good bit of chlorosis. I've had to feed them no end.
I got 6 bags of it recently but had to clean my friend's stalls to get it! That was a first for me not being the horsey type. It is mixed with some wood shavings aromatic with urine. Really heated up the compost pile nicely. Yum!
Everything LOOKS nicer after topdressing if nothing else.
(http://david-frary.com/images/garlic_BB_Feb.jpg) (http://david-frary.com/images/manured_beds.jpg)
Preparation for Jerusalem artichokes.
(http://david-frary.com/images/jerusalem_bed_1.jpg) (http://david-frary.com/images/jerusalem_bed_2.jpg)
The light gave out before I was finished but that manure gets dug in and the same amount again is put on top after planting.
Horse manure, 3 months on.