I am going to use HM this year on my plot and wondered what your thoughts were on HM in woodchips and HM in straw. I understand that the straw rots down better than woodchips but ultimately wouldn't you get the same benefits?
The reason I ask is that it's more common nowadays to find horses stabled with woodchips.
Your thoughts and experiences would be greatly appreciated.
TEYman
There's been a massive amount of discussion on this topic..
If you go to SEARCH and have a look you'll be busy reading for hours!
The problem with using wood based horse bedding as a soil conditioner is that you get loads of wood shavings (more like course sawdust) and not much equipoo., so you would be better to mix it with your normal compost in small amounts. I keep horses and sometimes use wood based bedding and I will mix it with more horse poo and compost it for 12 months before using it. If you just try to compost the bedding by itself, it will take ages to rot down.
How much equipee do you get soaked into it? The nitrogen should help the wood rot down, if there's enough of it.
stacking and regular soaking with pee (horse or human) will help to rot it down, plants require the Nitrogen/Carbon ratio th be about 1 - 7 straw is approx 1 - 70 wood is higher. Nitrogen is a mobile element, and will escape to the air, keep covered to increase rate of decomposition.
the nitrogen robbery sketch usually occurs when too much carbon is dug in to the soil, the soil nitrogen is used to decompose the carbon, not to feed your plants. this is not so much of a problem if used as a surface mulch instead of digging in. rgds, tony ;)