Chickencoupe,

If you want to you could spread & mix some of it in now and let it over winter and by spring it will have aged and broken down a little and shouldn't hurt the soil. The rest you could mix it in with other compost and be used that way. Manure is always better if it is let age for a while. You are right about horse manure is very rich. This is just my opinion.

My husband stormed in this evening and told me not to get excited. He convinced a local tree trimmer to dump off loads of wood, said that I could build hugelkulture beds to my heart's content.

When it rains it pours !!

How do you know the horse manure is herbicide and pesticide free? Do they only feed their horses certified-organic feed and hay? Just because they are racehorses, that doesn't tell you anything. Are the racehorses also 100% drug-free? (I kinda doubt it, and if any drugs are used on them, the residue could be in their manure.)

I'd compost it first separately away from the garden so that if there's anything undesirable in the manure, it will be able to break down someplace else, not directly on your growing beds. That's doubly true if the kids ever play in the soil in your garden with bare hands or bare feet.

Other than the need to ensure it is clean, horse manure is great for enriching soil, but if used in too high of a quantity, it can burn plant roots. GoneFishin' added horse manure/stable bedding to his garden every year and he had a beautiful garden. His horse manure/stable bedding was from his daughter's barn, so he knew specifically what was/wasn't used with her horses.

Yeah. I need to not let greed or excitement cloud my judgement, here. I'll be meeting the ranch hand this weekend to find out more. Even then, it'll probably be best to do as you and Arthur suggest. Then, plant-test it in the spring.

Bon,

Do you have access to an area down slope from your beds where you could do some massive compost piles? If so, you could run a hot compost pile all winter. Of course, you would have to restack it a couple of times. There are many recipes for hot composting on the web.

Tomorrow, I will be spreading more than a few tons of stall muck about 2" thick. The following day we will (shallow) plow it under about 4" deep. It will sit there in the wet soil all winter. Late next Spring we will plow it under about 6" deep. We will be growing our own mulch in it so I'm not as concerned about chemical residue.

The worms will love me!

Please send me your address again. My son sent me a present for Thor.

Johnny

I'm not positive, but I think if I pay for fuel, the dude will turn it on the farm! I would like to have some here so I can mix in leaves and local browns.

But, yeah, I cleared the bottom section of the lot and was considering piling it there as long as the old fart brigade doesn't get a whiff. lol

Chickencoupe,

I don't think it would smell if mixed with your wood chips and other compost. After it airs out a little there is very little smell involved. More of an earthy organic perfume.

Remember that if it were to test positive for persistent herbicide residue, that you still can grow grassy type plants (corn, sorghum, etc.) in it. The types of persistent herbicide residues that plague some manures even after composting only kill certain broadleaf plants, so grassy plants would be fine.

I wouldn't be overly worried about the aroma of horse manure if there aren't neighbors that are overly close. Surely the aroma of nice, clean horse manure cannot smell any worse than some other things....like the persistent smell of oil in the air.

ha I see whatcha did there ..

I picked up a load, today. Flattened a tire and also told me that I need to put air in the rear axle. It was a redneck adventure the entire trip.

On the way home at about 45 miles per hour some dudes got angry behind me on the single lane highway. They decided to both pass me in a fit of rage and one person making the whole train stop right in front of me. Now, it's quite obvious my little truck is really old. What they didn't know is that my brakes weren't handling a ton of horse manure very well! The kid in the first vehicle got out of his SUV and walked to the vehicle in front of me and started yelling at that driver to stay off the phone. My gd. What is wrong with people?


They use fine sand as bedding in the horse stables. I'm guessing it's about a 50:50 ratio of manure:sand. I'll hafta see what that sand does. It's composted enough I can test it right away. If it's okay, I'll use it in the onion bed along with some leaves and bunny berries. Otherwise, I'll need to spread it out real thin because of the sand. Horses eat mostly untreated prairie hay. Sweet feed.

Bon,

I would test it before spreading it. Good luck.

Chickencoupe,

Since it is half sand you wont have to worry about it being to hot for your garden soil as the sand will cut it down some. After you test it be careful of the Bunny Berries they can be rich as well. I will be a race to see which is 'faster' race horse biscuits or bunny berries.

LOL Auther I'm betting on the bunny berries. After all, the turtle always wins :D

Bon, Who knew that going and getting manure would be such an adventurous road trip? Glad you made it home in one piece. People were driving crazy here yesterday too, and our first responders were busy all night with multiple accidents on the interstate. I don't understand crazy and unsafe driving----it inevitably leads to trouble.

I'm with Johnny on this one---test that stuff before you use it. It always is better to be safe than sorry and imagine how distressed you'd be if your soil became contaminated with herbicide carryover and severely impacted your ability to garden for a year or two or three while you were growing mitigation crops.

Hopefully you won't get the heavy rain up there over the next few days like what we are expecting down here. My only real issue with heavy rain is how easily it can cause erosion in any areas not covered by cover crops. Well, and I'm not looking forward to Thanksgiving flooding, but I guess it beats having a Thanksgiving drought.

Enjoy your soil building.

Dawn

As I go to the trouble to fortifying the furries and drag things around as makeshift berms I keep reminding myself that it means spring will be awesome as long as there are no devastating tornadoes and no spring floods or no spring snow and freezing and ... oh, what's the use ... well, gotta try

But there will be devastating tornadoes more than likely, and autumn, winter and spring snow, and floods and late snow and late freezes and all of it....because that's just life here in OK. We garden on anyway despite it all. There's gardening challenges everywhere in the world, and most people think that their region is the "most challenging" place to garden. I just think all places have their own unique challenges. Our challenges here in OK just seem to change a lot from day to day and week to week---or, due to our physical location in the middle of the continent, sometimes we have a little bit of everything all at once---kinda like it will be over the next few days where some parts of OK may have a wintery mix or freezing precip while other areas have heavy rain and flash flooding. Hmmm. How dull would it be to live here if the weather always behaved itself perfectly and never gave us any trouble at all? No matter the weather, I've never had a year in which I felt like my gardening time and effort was wasted. It is always worth every bit of time and effort you put into it, but some years do produce more tangible rewards than others, as far as an actual harvest goes.

Chickencoupe,

I'll bet all that horse manure don't smell so bad now! Ha!ha!

lol auther I have a big beautiful pile of #### in my back yard. My husband and I giggle about me being knee deep in it while shoveling off the truck. Only a gardener...