How alkaline is your soil, and is it normal for your neck of the woods? Some plants will do well in mildly alkaline soil. Pine needles, peat moss, and chopped leaves will help redice the alkalinity some over time. Goi ahead and use the horse manure too! It won't hurt your cause a bit!

Ron
The Garden Guy
www.TheGardenGuy.org
"New Article - Plant 1-Month earlier This Year"

As long as the manure is composted well it should pose no problem in the garden. A bigger problem with manures than the dewormers are the potential disease pathogens that are present.
What is the pH of your soil. Optimal soil ph is in the 6.2 to 6.8 range. Since the only way to know for sure what that pH is is with a good, reliable soil test contact your local office of your state universities USDA Cooperative Extension Service about having that done.
Pine Needles? What about them. Research has shown that neither pine needles nor Oak leaves will significantly affect your soils pH so there is no reason to suspect that peat moss, coffee grounds, or any other organic matter will. Plants grow best in a soil with a pH in that 6.2 to 6.8 range because that is the range most soil borne nutrients are most readily available.

I'd agree with having a professional soil test done before you proceed much further. Home test kits just do not provide accurate readings and so you are pretty much just guessing at this point about your soil condition and what you need to do to improve it. At the very least, a professional test will provide you with a baseline for what you need to do going forward.

Changing a soil's pH can be problematic. Many soils have natural buffering capacities that are resistant to changes in pH and repeated amending is necessary to maintain a workable pH. The soil test will indicate this as well and should provide recommendations on what and how much to add to alter pH to optimum levels.

Adding organic matter can alter pH but not to any significant degree. As it continues to decompose, weak acids are released which tend to help raise low pH soils slightly and lower that of slightly alkaline soils. But the pH level of most decomposing OM tests out at slightly acidic and in some cases, pretty much neutral, so obviously the impact is not going to be great. If your soil is highly alkaline, just adding OM is not going to make any kind of measurable change. And since OM continues to decompose and disappear, you will need to replace it constantly to maintain that altered pH level.

Sulfur is the standard amendment to lower soil pH. The chemical reaction with the soil and water that results in a lower pH is long lasting. Agricultural sulfur is one of the most common soil amendments available - if you live in an area that tends towards alkaline soils, it should be readily available through any farm supply stores and even in the home improvement stores......you will not be the only one that's going to be needing it! If you can't find it locally (which is hard to imagine), you can order it by mail. It really is the most efficient product to lower soil pH to any significant and long lasting degree.

But get that soil test first!

I forgot to add that there's any number of good reasons to add organic matter to your soil so don't discount the benefit it provides (increasing soil biology, improving soil texture, providing moisture retention, improving drainage, nutrient supplementation, etc.) but don't expect OM alone to fully address soil pH issues. In most cases it won't.

Thanks for the advice guys. Yes, it was a home test kit, we have a small garden, didnt see the need to send off for soil test. Money? However, I will add OM to the soil, hope for the best. It also showed we were low on Nitrogen. In my neck of the woods, the soil is clay. pH was around 7.5 I think. I will add more OM, check it again, and call the local co-op to see if they carry sulfur. Thanks again!
ps- still not wanting to put horse manure on veggie garden, ivermectin is not very organic is it? Also, don't want my kids to eat anything with possible pathogens. But isnt that how they did it in the old days? Put manure directly on the garden?

If the soil in your area is usually alkaline, you should be able to find the stuff you need to lower the pH at your local stores.

And yes, putting manure directly on the garden is exactly what they did in the old days, though there were always concerns about how "hot" the manure was (with a few notable exceptions such as rabbit manure), and not letting it touch the plant roots directly for fear of "burning" them. When I was a child, my grandmother's aunt & uncle, who were still gardening well into their 70s, would get a huge load of horse manure from their son every Fall, and spread it across their garden. It would sit there all Winter under the snow, breaking down and allowing its nutrients to seep into the soil. In the Spring, they would plow it under and plant. They had the biggest and most prolific vegetables I've ever seen...I can still vividly remember the turnips and beets, bigger than I've ever seen, and not "woody" at all (which the larger ones often are). Amazing!

Manure is good stuff. I know next to nothing about dewormers or other medications, and how much they might persist after going through a digestive system and then a compost pile (or even just a lot of aging). Manure is such an amazing benefit to the garden that I'd want to do some more research on the topic before giving up on the idea.