New garden, how much composted manure?

13 years ago

I've just finished construction (almost) and moved into a new house and have a spot for a small kitchen garden--2 16' x 6' areas on either side of a walkway--where I plan to plant vegetables and herbs as soon as next week if possible.

I've been hoarding my 4 horses' stall leavings for the last 2 years so I have quite the supply of composted horse manure. (The horses are healthy and not on a daily wormer, other feed supplements or medications that might compromise things.) I bed the stalls with wood pellets that break down very quickly and are also efficient in that you don't muck as much of the bedding out of the stalls when cleaning which makes for a higher ratio of manure to bedding matter than when you bed with say shavings or straw.

I do not consider myself an "active" composter, although I've turned all the piles with a front end loader every month or two. It has no smell and mostly has no visible "apples." It's rather lovely actually.

The garden area has been tilled and has a least 6"-10" of a processed top soil that we brought in and used when grading around the whole house. I still need to add some sort of soil matter to bring this area up another 4"-6" to be even with the sidewalk. SO...

Can I/should I add 6" of straight compost? Do I need to cut it with more soil? Do I till it in? What am I not considering here? In any application how do you know how much compost to use?

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Comments (6)

wayne_5 zone 6a Central Indiana
13 years ago
I suppose that most compost applications are about 2 inches. My take on your situation if it was me...others will always have other ideas. I would have preferred to have added about 4 inches last year or last fall and worked it deeply into your beds. I'm not sure that your compost is fully finished so I would go a more sparingly than 6 inches all at once just before planting.
annpat
13 years ago
I'd fill it up, fork it in, and hope for the best. But that's just me. The manure you're describing sounds lovely.
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For a number of years I transplanted into soil beds which had just been covered with about 8 inches of moderately fresh manure (horse or cow). I was improving soil by introducing the manure, and did not have a ready source of much plant debris. I was putting down about 8 tons of manure a week, and found that the transplants thrived in the straight manure beds. The plants obviously enjoyed the rich environment. Even by the later part of the season the soil was much more mellow, and became very porous and workable. I was more conservative than the organic certification guidelines about wait periods between application of manure and harvest of crops. Since I was amending acres of land, I could choose crops that were suitable for the manure beds, and put crops which I didn't want to get the manure exposure on areas treated in previous years. While it may be nice to add plant debris to animal manures when making compost, it is certainly not necessary. Animal manures will compost well on their own; adding some plant debris may help to capture some N that may otherwise be lost, but the final product of manure-only composting is quite good. These days, I generally do not bring in manure for soil for two reasons: I no longer need the external input, and unfortunately, many of the manure streams near me are contaminated with persistent herbicides. I've tested a beautiful, huge set of piles of llama manure just a couple miles from me which has aged for over 7 years now. It had easily detectable, damaging herbicides still in it. A small commercial grower had used some in their fields, and they lost the crops in that area. For now, if I import organic materials, it will be readily available yard waste, municipal compost and wood chips. Renais
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Kimmsr
13 years ago
What does your soil need? That is the determining factor in how much of any nutrient source to add. Nutrietns in manures are fairly soluble and can be washed out of soil quickly if there is not sufficient other organic matter in the soil to help hold them in place.
Like a good compost pile your soil needs about 3 times as much vegetative waste as manure.
dchall_san_antonio
13 years ago
THANK YOU for not deworming your healthy animals. Dewormer is known to kill dung beetles and may be the ultimate bane of our agricultural society.

My daughter used to ride and the stables allowed me to take as much of their manure as I wanted. I was the only one back there for a year so I know what what going on. I always took the fresh stuff but they had 30 horses in stalls so I could not possibly keep up. As they moved their mound and extended it out, I kept an eye on the original area of dumping. The apples were intact there for a year. About at the year anniversary I ventured over to the original spot to check it out. I expected that the apple shapes would have been long gone due to decomposition and rain, but no. Reluctantly I scooped up some of the pile at the surface and it was amazing! It looked fresh (like it was a week old) but it smelled fresh (like it was a year old). It was ready to use immediately and had never been turned or touched.

Keep this in mind with organic fillers. They will completely disappear in a year. If you applied 9 inches of compost today, next spring your soil level would be back to where it was before you applied the compost. If you applied 9 inches of compost and 1 inch of a mineral soil (clay or sand), in a year you would have only the mineral soil remaining. Furthermore it is nearly impossible to mix compost and mineral soil perfectly. You will end up with pockets of soil and pockets of compost. The compost pockets will disappear leaving a hole and the soil pockets will not change leaving a bump as everything settles. For this reason I suggest you get the soil where you want it by applying the top soil and leveling it. Soak it and relevel. Let it dry, relevel, soak it again, and relevel. The soil will settle each time. Then in the end use the compost on the surface only. Mother Nature has no mechanism for mixing Her compost (fall leaves) into the soil. She always applies it to the surface. I don't know Her reasoning but I'll go along with it.
leira
13 years ago
If you applied 9 inches of compost today, next spring your soil level would be back to where it was before you applied the compost.

Whether it's all gone within a single year will depend on weather and other local conditions...hut yes, over time, most of it will be gone. There is some very small percentage of organic matter that is longer-lived, though, and this is what it strictly meant by "humus." Over time, you can build up humus levels in the soil.

Furthermore it is nearly impossible to mix compost and mineral soil perfectly.

When it's been particularly important for me to have well-mixed soil (like in a raised bed, for instance), I've mixed it in batches in a wheelbarrow or bin, and then dumped the resulting mix into the bed. However, a single raised bed is a smaller scale than many gardens, and this might not be practical over a larger area.

Mother Nature has no mechanism for mixing Her compost (fall leaves) into the soil.

That's not strictly true...worms, for instance, do a pretty good job over time.
jolj
13 years ago
I have never had a problem of too much compost in my garden or of low N, because of raw or semi raw plant matter in my garden. It maybe that the garden fairy is looking out for me.
I think that the soil web,earth worms & grubs just work over time to get the job done.
It may be that I till in the Fall & Spring, but I doubt that make a noticeable differences.

New garden, how much composted manure?

Comments (6)

wayne_5 zone 6a Central Indiana

annpat

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