Horse manure advice
* Red Dahlia *
Posts: 694
I have access to lots of fresh manure from the stables, should I bag some and keep over winter to mix with spent compost for my French beans.
what other veg could benefit from compost and horse manure?
will one winter in a bag be enough??
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Yes, add it to compost bin, or stack it in a heap to mature. Fabulous stuff. When it's well-rotted you could use it to mulch around fruit bushes (making sure it doesn't touch the stems) as well as use it in a bean trench.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Fresh manure from the stables is different from manure from the field.the former contains a lot of straw from the bedding.I layer nettles, grass cuttings and manure, result useable compost in 4 months A little longer for the straw based.
Is there any way to use well rotted animal manure as well as green manure? I've got beds free and have seeds for field beans and grazing rye that I would like to use, but I've also noticed animal manure going free and would like to try it out. Can I use them both at the same time over winter?
Would I lay the manure over the top and sow seeds into it, or sow the seeds and then lay manure over, to ensure the seeds roots are going down into my clay soil? Don't want to waste a season by making a mistake!
A word of warning re horse manure. Make sure that you know where it comes from and try to talk to other people who have satisfactorily used it.
A couple of years ago people on my allotment site regularly used manure delivered to them from a couple of local riding stables. Subsequently a lot of those people found rows of beans and seedlings were dying off.
Investigation proved without any doubt it was the manure, which had been contaminated by Pyralid herbicides.
Aminopyralid weed killers have been used by Stables to control troublesome perennial weeds, and stables can also use,unknown to them,hay which has been treated with Pyralid herbicides.
Pyralid toxicity can last in the soil for up to 18 months.
The problem came to light about 5 years ago, and for a while amino pyramids were taken off the market, but I believe they are being sold again.
So, don't stop using horse manure, which I think is the best treatment for my allotment soil, but do exercise extreme caution as to sources
If it was in the hay, as opposed to the straw, it makes you wonder what it was doing to the horses.
The manure we get is mixed with wood shavings. They take a longer time to rot down,and some say they deplete the soil of nutrients, so we put the manure onto the compost heap first. More work but safer.
Makes you wonder what it can do to us, as it has been found in cattle in the US
yet another reason to go vegetarian!
I can get manure with shavings but was thinking about bringing some home when I poo pick the fields.so mix with spent compost for beans. How about tomatoes and tatties and courgettes.