Got my horse manure!

14 years ago

My son (who works 2 jobs, an oil company from 7:30 am till 4, then a cleaning co, from 4 till about 9 every night) finally came home at 4 yesterday. He offered to take his truck to the neighbors for horse manure. The neighbor loads it with a tractor bucket, and I get the pleasure of unloading.I got 3 bucket loads. This stuff was dark brownish black, and kinda crumbly. It still has some odor tho. I have read some farmers put it directly on the gardens, fresh, so I figured I would go ahead and till it into the raised beds we are putting in for the potager. I think my dogs liked it a little tooo well.

Tammy

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Comments (11)

lavender_lass
14 years ago
Tammy- LOL Congratulations!

I think it's better to use aged horse manure, but it sounds like yours is partially aged. The best is when it's drying and gets flaky...can you tell I have horses and garden? :)

If you haven't tilled it in yet, you might let it dry a little first. If you've already tilled it in, don't worry. Just don't use fresh manure on plants (like spinach) that are already growing in the bed... if fresh manure gets on the leaves, it could have e-coli issues.

Great job on the garden! I can't believe how fast you're getting all this done. If it ever stops snowing, you are my inspiration :)
tammyinwv
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks lavender_lass. The only thing similar to the spinach i would be growing is lettuce. But I think for this year I might just grow it in a couple of pots.I think we are pretty much done with the winter weather now. For the next week the low is to get about 40Â°, so thats not too bad. Most of the manure is kinda flaky, and the odor is only mild. Enough to keep my "girly" 4 yo DGD away tho,lol. She was screaming over earth worms today. I havent worked it in yet, but will prob get to it this weekend. I worked on another bed that is so dry and hard I could hardly shovel it.But I loosened up some of the top layer and then tried to work in some of the manure around my hosta's, Montauk's, and Heuchera. I looked at my terraced bed full of wild onion, and just didnt have the energy to tackle it. Thats the problem with such a big bed, its just looks too daunting. I am hoping with the w/s I can get it too full for weeds.
Tammy
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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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New to this forum. Enjoying all the new stuff I'm learning. Feeding Bambis alfalfa will get verrry expensive. I have both cows and horses and can't tell any difference in how hot it is or which one has more weeds, although my grandfather always swore horse manure was too hot. You can use green manure, but don't pile it up thick on anything or it will burn (it starts cooking). You can mix green in with your native soil, and it will be fine. I planted larkspur and delphenium directly into green manure and they were gorgeous and healthy. I used to plant my annuals with a scoop of composted manure and got many, many weeds immediately around the plant. I blamed the manure and started planting them with a spoonful of Osmacote. I still have lots of weeds. I realize now it was the combination of turning over the weed seeds to sunlight when I planted along with the added nutrients. It doesn't matter whether it's manure or a commercial fetilizer. I'm going back to the manure as it's free. My conclusion: Weed seeds are everywhere and when you turn them over to the sunlight and give them a boost with manure or commercial fertilizers, they go nuts.
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That completely depends on how you intend to use the compost and when in the growing season. If you are using it in the fall to overwinter, extra manure is okay. If you are applying it in spring shortly before planting or applying throughout the growing season, you should only add a small amount. I would compost it separately adding some cardboard into it and combine the composted manure with with my other compost in the very early spring when I am preparing the garden for planting. Then do the same throughout the year as "dressing". I add a very small amount of horse manure to my grandfather's compost heap, but none to my own. It's a matter of him having it available on the premises while I don't. I know some people compost the manure separately and simply cover it with a tarp. This helps to kill the possible pathogens. THEN they add it to the compost pile in fall/winter when there are so fewer greens available for the heap. Manure is considered a green. It would probably be useful for back up greens if you live in a drought area, as well. I will probably start doing this, too. I always have so many leaves and too few greens in the fall.
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As I stated in my original post. I can give you some numbers if you're interested but I won't post actual documents. Sorry, it's a legal thing. By the way, you may be on to something regarding the diet but my gut feeling is that differences in diet will only go so far. Their physiology is very different from cows, horses, etc. (primarily how their body uses water, which I'm guessing affects solute concentrations in their tissues and waste). I could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet that it's going to be salty regardless. I'm also taking into account the fact that zoos will usually try to mimic the diet that their species typically has access to. Anyway, I have averaged out some results and here are a few of the highlights. The salinity level of the camel manure typically came in around 30 to 35 dS/m. For comparison, a soil salinity level of 3.0 dS/m is considered elevated and could cause some plants to start showing foliage burn and reduced vigor. (Another fun factoid I'll throw in here just for kicks ECw of sea water is around 40 dS/m or so.) Of course, you would be amending with the stuff rather than planting directly into it so let's explore that a little more. Let's say you were amending a sandy loam soil at a typical compost rate of 4 cu. yds. per 1000 sq. ft., tilled to a depth of 6 inches. (to get an organic content of approximately 20% by volume.) That would raise your salinity by about 10 dS/m, which would be on top of whatever the salinity level in the soil was before you started amending. 10 dS/m alone would be enough to cause most plants to show burning and stunting. Many plants would just plain die. Also consider the fact that about 70% of the salinity level is coming from soluble sodium. (around 250 milliequivalents per liter) Also, soluble chloride was found to be around 200 to 300 milliequivalents per liter. The high sodium and chloride values brings up the specific toxicity issues I described above. Also the abundant sodium is not balanced by calcium and magnesium and you end up with an SAR of around 35 or so. (An SAR of 6 is considered elevated) and use of such a high sodium / low calcium and magnesium material could bring about an elevated SAR in the soil, which can impede soil structure and water infiltration. I also noticed something else that I'd forgotten about. The boron values in the samples I'm looking at come in at about 5 to 6 parts per million (ppm) in saturation extract. If used at the 4 cu. yd. rate, this would be likely to bump the boron level above the threshold at which a broad range of plants start to show boron toxicity symptoms (burning of foliage and poor growth performance). The really fun part about boron is that it does not leach readily and, consequently, correcting an elevated boron level in the soil is particularly challenging. Could you use it at a very low rate and avoid the problems? Well sure, but like I said before, a rate low enough to avoid the problems would provide very little benefit compared to other materials. Of course, maybe all camel manures aren't equal but with the information I have, I would stick with something less exotic.
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ali-b
14 years ago
Only a gardener would understand the excitement that horse manure can bring! I can understand a 4 yr dgd screaming at the icky things. My 13 yo son doesn't even like to come into the garden because there's too many gross things in it.

I hear you on the wild onion. Right now it's my best crop in the paths and perimeter beds. I have one area of the garden that is clear of it. A little at a time...I figure I have until May to get it all outta there.
tammyinwv
Original Author
14 years ago
I have never had this much onion before. My beds are full.
Tammy
lavender_lass
14 years ago
We did the rototilling in the area that's going to be the potager...former home of the horse corral and part of the pasture. When we got to the area where the corral has been the past five years, the manure was so light and fluffy underneath it looks like compost. Even our friend who was helping us was amazed (you can always spot a gardener) LOL.

Anyway, this is too nice to keep all in one area, so I'm spreading it out in all my flowers beds, especially for the areas where I'm planting my roses. After we finish that, we'll dig it up again and rake everything out, then lay out the potager. It's a little bit of a setback, but well worth it for the great fertilizer!
tammyinwv
Original Author
14 years ago
lavender_lass, you should be able to grow diamonds in that soil. I have gone thru one truckload (3 dozer scoops) and waiting to get another truckload. All I have left is about a wheelbarrow full. I am transplanting w/s seedlings and a couple of scoops of manure is going into each hole. Also been redoing, and remaking some other beds with lots of manure added. These beds were just partially done, things thrown into poor soil. Not much to look at. Now they have penny black edging the front of the row, and other flowers and hosta's behind.
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Tammy
lulabellesview
14 years ago
Tammy, it's so much fun to see your photos and envision the setting for your new potager. Who does your edging? It's so neat and tidy. Hubby just rented a machine to do our beds. It wasn't self-propelled so the slopes were tricky.
tammyinwv
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks Laura. Thats a real compliment coming from you. WEEELLL, I didnt have any real slopes to work with, but those edgings were done by manpower, or I should say GIRL power. It was just me and a shovel. With all the gardening I have been doing the past 2 weeks, I have the hands to prove it. Darn blisters!
Tammy
lavender_lass
14 years ago
Tammy- Your beds are beautiful, but I also love your arbor, fence and porch! They are so pretty. I can't wait to see more pictures :)
tammyinwv
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks lavender_lass. I will try to get more posted on my blog.
TAmmy
tammyinwv
Original Author
14 years ago
I comaplined I was down to about a half wheelbarrel load of manure, well thanks to my son, he just went and hauled me in a trailer load of well aged horse manure again. This time 4 dozer scoops. Its a good think they just live 2 houses down from me.He said it was probably close 2 ton. Woopppieee!
Tammy

Got my horse manure!

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Got my horse manure!

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