Unless there is a strong urine or ammonia odor, the bedding should make a great mulch. Any strong odor would be high nitrogen and may burn some roots. Horse manure is rated 27:1 and can be composted straight or lightly mixed (25 - 30:1 is optimal) Here a mix calculator: Here is a link that might be useful: Compost Calculator

I usually till three times a year--twice in the spring to prepare the beds, and then once in the fall to prepare them for winter (although I am less likely to do the fall tilling). I don't use mulch, and I just top dress with composted manure regularly. Yet I have tons of worms in my soil. I use wide beds and try to plant whatever I am growing as close together as possible. Yes, they say this increases disease and bugs, but IME, it has not done so. What it does do is conserve moisture and protect the soil. Then it is a cinch to hand hoe the few weeds that do appear. Thing is, I only till down about 3 inches max. I have never seen the necessity of going deeper. My neighbor is an old-school tiller, and he tills down to 8 inches(!) on a regular basis, at least once a week. He likes to till his grass clippings in, which he fertilizes with synthetics that include herbicides. He uses rows instead of beds, so a lot of the soil is tilled. His garden soil is completely dead. He likes it, though, because for him, a soft soil is a good soil, and it is most definitely soft. He does in fact raise good tomatoes. So do I, and he can't figure out how I do it.:) It takes all kinds to make a horse race.

I'm just surprised you talked him into giving it to you it if was supposed to be reserved for the parks and recreation board. Where you use it depends on how you use it. If you are going to put it directly on top of the ground, then yes, I think stuff will sprout in it. The only way to avoid that would be to put down a layer of something between the ground and the soil/mulch mix. That "something" could be newspapers laid 12-20 pages thick, cardboard, or woven (not perforated) landscape cloth fabric. That layer will keep anything that sprouts in the soil/compost mix from rooting down into the soil underneath up to a point, but you'll still have to pull up whatever sprouts because eventually the roots can work their way down through the newspaper, cardboard or woven cloth landscape fabric. Mulch in and of itself, of course, never means that you'll never have weeds--just that much of the weed activity is suppressed, weeds that sprout in the mulch are easier to pull than those that are in the ground, the ground is kept cooler and the bed has a more finished look. Mulching never stops either. The mulch breaks down and continually replenishes the soil so you keep having to add mulch on top of old mulch. I add mulch to one garden bed or another almost every week during the growing season. I'd go ahead and use the stuff I picked up as mulch immediately because, if you don't, then you run the risk that rain and wind are going to start blowing/washing away the soil in the soil/mulch mix. Wherever you use it, it will keep weeds down somewhat but weeds eventually will sprout and, at that point, you can pull them up before they get big and then go back and get plain wood chips to lay on top of the wood/soil mix. I hope your husband can just relax and tolerate the piles for a while. Creating a nice landscape takes time and all those piles that might seem a little unsightly now are an investment in your yard's future beauty. That's why I call my husband long-suffering...because he tolerates my piles and my experiments and, whenever there is a crisis, he drops what he is doing to shoot a venomous snake, rescue a guinea from the talons of a hawk, cover up tomato plants in the face of an impending frost, repair a fence that a deer has crashed into (but not sailed over!), etc. Sometimes I think non-gardening spouses have to be the most patient people on earth. Of course, he gets to be the "good guy" too, carrying tons of excess produce to work to share with his co-workers, which makes him a "hero" in their eyes. Dawn

Still more good points. Thanks, Jammie. I agree that I don't want anything sitting around in the kitchen that will draw bugs or smell. We already have our fair share of house flies, and fruit flies if I leave produce on the counter. I don't need to be attracting them. Some of the stuff goes out to the chickens, like melons, cukes and so on, and the dogs get most of the meat scraps. We butchered some lambs this spring, but there was no way on earth I was going to put all that on any compost pile. It all went off to a neighbor who did something with it. I gave him the hides in exchange, so it was a good trade. I don't have a tumbler and would probably forget to use it if I did have one, but I can see that I've been wasting a lot of produce that could have been added to the pile instead of being thrown out. Lettuce, cabbage, sprouts and so on, not to mention all the egg shells, coffee grounds, and paper plates I've thrown away. Thirty lashes for me! All the grasses and weeds that I pull out of the flower beds have been going on the burn pile because I've been afraid of stuff simply seeding and reproducing in that nice mulch. Will it break down and not be a problem? My mulch heap would be at least twice its size if I had been adding that stuff. I can see that I'll be grabbing a grocery bag to take to the garden instead of dropping stuff in the garbage can from now on. Our chicken coop is big, about 12 x 24' or so, with a regular walk door. The wheelbarrow or trailer won't fit in the door, but I can pull up right in front of it to shovel the stuff out after it's been gathered into a pile. The sheep pens are the same way. Usually they are roaming out in the pasture, but if they are lambing or the weather is really bad, they like to go in the pens for shelter. Even when the bedding has been pulled out for summer, there is usually enough manure to make it worthwhile to clean them out now and then. One added note is: the main problem I have with putting any cardboard down at all on this property is that the scorpions love to hide under it. Since each reaction I've had to a bite has been worse than the one before, I tend to be a bit nervous about creating a ready-made habitat for them. I do use thick layers of newspaper a lot, but soak it down completely and then pile mulch over the top. It's usually kept damp by the regular watering. So far it has not been a problem for harboring any sort of nasties. Pat.