Tilling hot horse manure directly into veggie patch?

16 years ago

I just received a number of loads of fresh horse manure, plus some fresh chicken manure.

I've just rototilled up a clay/peat based patch of land for a new garden, and it is rich in minerals and little NPK.

If I till this manure in now (maybe 3-4 inches deep over entire surface area, tilled up to 4-6" deep), will my veggies, sunflowers and nursery seedlings all still burn? Or how long should I wait to plant? Ground is damp, lots of rain should be expected next few days.

Thanks!

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Comments (8)

Kimmsr
16 years ago
The optimal time to till manure into soil was last fall, if you were to till it in at all. What else do you have to till in with this manure? You will hear that anywhere from two to six weeks will be necessary before planting after you till this spring, but manure is always best composted beore being added to soil.
jwheeler32
16 years ago
As you probably know, plant food must become available before your plants can use it. Non-available plant food will not help you. You are on the right track with the manure. But, the plant food in "green" or fresh manure is not available and does not become available until it is released by the decay of organic matters inside. Waiting for manure to rot in soil can be a slow process, especially in heavy or clay soils. You want to keep the manure in a compact built up square heap, not a loose pyrimidial pile. It should be turned from bottom to top and outside in and rebuilt every month, and sprayed lightly with the mist of your hose (not soaked). Make sure it is under cover so it does not wash out. Next year you probably should get your manure in the fall if your going to get it fresh, it needs some time to rot. Only use well rotted old manure in the garden itself, because if plant food is not available it is useless.

Jamie Wheeler is the author of "Organic Gardening Secrets", dedicated to helping you grow healthy, pesticide free fruits and vegetables at home without spending a lot of time or money.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ultimate Organic Gardening Secrets
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Considering that I've had horses since I was about 5 years old and poultry of all sorts, I've probably eaten more manure incidentally than most people. I have had a few animals through the years with diarrheal illnesses but since they were my own I simply used manure at those times on trees instead of gardens. 45 years, I've had one foal with e.coli. I had a couple of pot belly pigs and a dog with a clostridium perfringens infection ( not botulism), and a few calves,that I bought as a day-old from a huge dairy farm that had salmonella and e.coli. I believe the foal with e.coli caught it from the calves. The calves were pretty sick and the scarey thing is that the infections were resistant to all known antibiotic classes, both the e.coli and the salmonella. I was very careful handling the calves and manure. With those antibiotic resistances, I have to wonder what our dairy supplies are like. Not to mention feed lot cattle and big-ag poultry. Remember, this is over 45 years and countless numbers of animals of all sorts! I was raising horses and cattle for a long time, still breed a few horses. I had up to thirty cattle in my herd and we raised dogs for show/field trials. I also ran a kennel for several years. I think small operations with manure, especially organic and free range, are relatively low risk. Probably far less risk than eating vegetables from the grocery store! Still, pregnant women and those with decreased imunnofunction should be more cautios, obviously. I do compost my manures but there are usually areas less composted or aged than others. When we move, I plan to do a three bin system to avoid this issue. I have no way to do this right now.
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The first rule of gardening is to NEVER use fresh manure on a garden. It will burn the plants. I am hoping you used fully composted horse manure. If that is true, it's not a problem, and good for vegetables. The problem with the wood shavings is that it takes a lot of nitrogen to break them down, and may leave the compost nitrogen depleted. This is not a problem as long as you add a good source of nitrogen to your garden. Blood Meal is pure nitrogen that can be worked into the soil, and watered in. That should solve a low nitrogen issue. As for the weeds, well yes, horse manure may have a lot of weed seeds if the animal grazes. Composting the manure helps some, but many piles do not get hot enough to kill all weed seeds. What I would do is put down a good mulch, to prevent the sun from hitting the soil directly. No sun = no weed seed germination. I would suggest checking out Gardener's Supply Company. They have a lot of both fabric and paper mulching sheets. I have successfully used the paper sheets in a vegetable garden. You can walk on them, they will stop weeds, and it just composts away at the end of the season. Or perhaps the paper mulch found there will give you an idea of where to get a similar product locally. Some people use newspaper, but I've found that in order to pile it on thick enough to stop weeds, it's also thick enough to interfere with watering. Check it out. Mulch won't prevent all weeds, but it really helps.
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Aw shucks, thanks folks! ":^), Yeah I think that tilling it two or three times before the final time definitely is a big factor in making good compost like that, because it does help break it down but it also mixes it thoroughly and aerates it too. I went thru an evolutionary process to arrive at using my tiller. I tried turning with a fork, poking holes with a big crow bar, burying a perforated pipe in the pile and then used my and drilling numerous holes in the pile. Each of those approaches will make compost, given time, were progressively better, but took varying amounts of physical exertion, and my supply of that was limited. I decided to use what ever mechanical means I had available to do the job in an agressive manner and it paid off well. I do not use much fossil fuel at all, it only takes a few minutes to till the pile up, and even less to pile it back up with my little on my garden tractor. I also had a little brainstorm and made a to work on the lift on the garden tractor to fluff the pile with in between tillings. It also doubles as a fork lift on a limited scale. (I just enjoy playing around with my cutting tools and welder and making useful, functional stuff like that, not to mention saving labor and enabling me to do stuff that I could not otherwise do, The other factors are lots and lots of shredded oak leaves and I have been very fortunate to obtain those pick up loads of about every imaginable kind of fruits and veggies from the supermarket dumpster too. Now they have locked them off. The manager said to call him a couple of hours in advance when composting time comes around again and he will save back some garbage cans of the good stuff for me. I hope that he is still there when I am ready again, if not I will be back to using horse manure (which is hard to beat) along with what ever else I can scrounge up. Right now I am just burying my kitchen scraps and a little bit of garden waste, but that is breaking down and working. Happy composting and gardening to you all. Bill P.
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"I have terrible, hard, clay dirt here." Even your hard clay dirt can be made into fertile loam by sheet composting on top of it. Sheet composting goes by many names, Ruth Stout method, Lasagna, and probably some others. "Ruth Stout" search sheet composting And, yes, use a tarp, or other strong water-proof material, to cover your piles to keep rain off, (unless the piles are dry, in which case they need water). But only so much (water), not to the point of the manure washing away. Worms don't work if the material's too dry, so the presence of worms is an indicator that everything is just fine in the water department. Too wet, and flies begin to breed in the piles, and you'll have lots of protein wriggling about, plus the piles won't heat up. Cover the piles, but do not make them airtight. Tarp can be tied to stakes (outside the frame), some feet above ground, to let in air. Make piles highest in middle to ensure rain runs off and doesn't pool on tarp. If rain pools, build a ridge (think 'roof' or 'tent') to support tarp. Let tarp extend over a wider area then the pile itself (to protect from driving rains) (like the rain guard of a tent). Your piles need rain-proof cover, as well as good air circulation. Something else: huge piles of raw materials end up being much, much smaller piles of finished compost, so you should keep that in mind if you want to fill your frames. ÂTo end up with filled frames of finished compost: ÂYou could temporarily extend the height of your frames (say, quadruple the height) with chicken wire attached to stakes, rebars, or other easily installed & removed supports. ÂThen, line the inside walls with cardboard to contain the raw materials. First, cut airholes in cardboard. ÂThen fill the now much heigher frames "to the rafters" with raw materials. Some people say that the more varied the raw materials, the more nutritious the compost. So in addition to lots of manure(s), add your kitchen vegetable waste, used coffe grounds (Starbucks), supermarket produce waste, dry leaves, cut grass clippings, old hay and straw, etc. Composters have redefined the term "hunters and gatherers." Last but not least, insert old tennis balls onto rebars (to prevent accidently poking out an eye if slipping and falling, or just bending over to pick up something on the ground). Rebars are dangerous in that sense.
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jolj
9 years ago
I have tilled in raw/green manure 60-90 days & got no burn on plant & they grew well, with out added compost.
renais1
9 years ago
I've put fresh horse manure straight from the corral into the garden, and not had problems with burning if I till it in. I generally tilled it into the top 8" or so of soil. For me, an inch or two of manure worked well. I did not have other sources of organics, so did not use any. The greatest challenge I found with the horse manure was the huge number of seeds in the product. For this reason I've stopped using fresh manure straight into the garden. Taking the time to compost it helps to get rid of some of the seeds. If putting the manure some place where the weeds won't bother you (like an orchard) then go ahead and just lay the manure on the surface; the soil critters will mix it in.
Renais
grubby_AZ Tucson Z9
9 years ago
One other reason for not being in a hurry with fresh animal manures is the safe tack of letting it sit a good long time so that any diseases can die out. This is not a problem with ornamentals but with foods it might be prudent to go slowly for the sake of your family's health. That sounded nasty. It's not meant to be. Just cautious. Horses have mighty diseases too.
peter_6
9 years ago
I would leave fresh horse manure six months before incorporation, i.e. next spring. Quite the best practice is to compost it with "brown stuff" like dead leaves or dried grass clippings, or really any garden or kitchen waste. . Since you have lots of it, wind-row composting would be best, turning it weekly. If you have a skid-steer loader, that would be ideal for turning. Otherwise a garden fork and a strong arm. Regards, Peter.
jolj
9 years ago
The USDA says 90-120 days from the time the manure first hits the ground.
That is 90 day for above ground vegetables(beans) & 120 for underground vegetables (turnips,potatoes,radishes).
But I know persons who use green manure, both on top of the garden & tilled in with not problem that any of us can see in the 10 year they been using manure.
Lloyd
9 years ago
The 120 day guideline also includes crops that have the potential for contact. IOW, not just root crops.

Lloyd

Here is a link that might be useful: Guidelines for Using Manure on Vegetable Gardens

Tilling hot horse manure directly into veggie patch?

Comments (8)

Kimmsr

jwheeler32

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