Horse manure as a good garden compost?.🤔🤔🤔

[Jstpssng]

Weeds are nature’s way of improving the soil. If you have more time than money let the weeds grow but mow the seed tops to reduce spreading. Mow high. Adding annual rye grass helps. As does light tilling.

You raise a good point. When I had an abandoned field reclaimed, the top layer of soil ended up in the pile with the stumps. The first plants which came in were Queen Anne's lace, daisies and black eyed Susans. These have big root clusters which started aerating the soil. Even the buckwheat and rye I planted came up anemic and didn't really do anything. Over time, grasses and weeds started coming in. A few years ago I realized that the wood in the stump piles had rotted down, so I'm gradually working that back into my garden. The entire 2 acre field has been taken over by grasses. This week I plan to turn it under, disc, and plant a cover crop of winter rye.

 

[beenthere]

Why not? Cabs are enclosed and have filtration so none of it gets in and heck of a lot better than knifing in Anhydrous Ammonia which will kill you right now if you breathe the vapor.

Spent one spring in my college days (1961) running a crew of 5 anhydrous (NH3) rigs knifing in anhydrous ammonia. Looking back, not a drop of water on these rigs in case of an emergency. Filled all the mounted tractor tanks from 1000 gal truck tanks by bleeding off the small tank to fill from the nurse tank. Many a strong whiff of anhydrous that literally "takes your breath away".
Off-loaded rail tank cars into a 10,000 gal tank the same way. Included manually moving the rail cars by releasing the rail car brakes and moving them with a long handled bar by wedging a wheel. But didn't know the real danger of handling NH3. Learned later how to blow up ground using NH3 and diesel fuel, touched off with a single blasting cap, to make duck ponds. The end of using that came when some no-goods blew up a building in Madison on the UW campus in 1971 and then another such bomb in OK. Lethal stuff if mixed with diesel.

 

[Bobrown14]

I think some people have redefined organic just to mean they don't use herbicide or pesticide. I'm not sure if there is an official definition.

Yeah they ain't certified organic just using that term a bit too liberally like the fertilizer they using.

I've never bought a bag of chemical fertilizer. I'm not certified organic but thats how we grow.

We make compost piles sustainably from what we have here on the property. Wood ash and leaves along with crop waste and green manure cover crops. It works but I ain't gonna make a living do-in it. My neighbor converted to cover crops and manure to grow cattle. They never tasted as good. Straw works too as a ground cover and even better mixed in with cow manure.

 

[beenthere]

Yes to the Grazon comment.

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[MHarryE]

As a farmer, I can no longer get ammonium nitrate 33-0-0 (the explosive Timothy McVeigh used) as a fertilizer due to its explosive nature. Instead we use urea (46-0-0) which is more expensive but not as easy to use as an explosive. Problem with rotted manure is the nitrogen available reacts with air (which is mostly nitrogen) and poof, the nitrogen ends up in the atmosphere. When we spread liquid manure from our dairy herd, we have someone following with a tillage tool to work the manure into the soil before its nitrogen disappears into thin air. As for weed seed, studies have shown 27% of hard weed seeds remain active after passing through cattle digestive system, but the gizzard of poultry and the like destroys all but 3 to 4% of hard weed seed.

 

[Dmacleo]

I keep about 35 cubic yards on hand all year round. leaves and leftovers get added for nitrogen,
turn the pile over every 4 weeks or so,
I got cats so bunch of rodents in pile also. I can take a rabbit or chicken to nothing in 4 weeks.

 

[keljan11]

I have used horse manure as a garden compost for quite a long time.
No other commercial compost or fertilizer but only well rotten horse compost.
Definitely., I recommend rotten horse manure as a good garden compost.
Jkk

All my dad ever used for his garden was aged horse manure, that he dug out from the bottom from the barn, (well compacted and almost black), roto tilled it in. He grew a large garden, with huge tomatoes, corn, and 8 ft corn stocks. As kids, we were the shovel operators, and he was the wheelbarrow operator. He did it for as long as I can remember

 

[KingBubba]

Horse manure is described as "Not Hot". whereas cow/pig manure is rated as "Hot", in that it is high in nitrogen. In my next door neighbor I have a perfect example of how horse manure is beneficial. In Central Florida, the soil is mostly sand with little nutrient value. My next door neighbor, a Mexican gentleman, has a section of his property fenced off as pasture for his horse, Tormenta. The horse has pastured there for at least 5 year. The weed, dog fennel, grows on mine and his property. The dog fennel on my property is waist high, but on his property the dog fennel is towering at a height of, at least, 10 feet and higher. Horse manure may not be high in nitrogen, but there is no doubts, for me, that it improves soil heath.

 

[Richard001]

Spent one spring in my college days (1961) running a crew of 5 anhydrous (NH3) rigs knifing in anhydrous ammonia. Looking back, not a drop of water on these rigs in case of an emergency. Filled all the mounted tractor tanks from 1000 gal truck tanks by bleeding off the small tank to fill from the nurse tank. Many a strong whiff of anhydrous that literally "takes your breath away".
Off-loaded rail tank cars into a 10,000 gal tank the same way. Included manually moving the rail cars by releasing the rail car brakes and moving them with a long handled bar by wedging a wheel. But didn't know the real danger of handling NH3. Learned later how to blow up ground using NH3 and diesel fuel, touched off with a single blasting cap, to make duck ponds. The end of using that came when some no-goods blew up a building in Madison on the UW campus in 1971 and then another such bomb in OK. Lethal stuff if mixed with diesel.

My brother, rest his soul, was a farmer, this was back in the 60's. When clearing some new land that had stumps, he would drill a hole down into the stump, packed some of the fertilizer, mixed with some diesel fuel into the hole and then would stick a 1/4 stick of dynamite in there, light the fuse and run like hell. Did a great job on stumps.

And no, he did not die while using this method.

 

[5030]

Weeds are nature’s way of improving the soil. If you have more time than money let the weeds grow but mow the seed tops to reduce spreading. Mow high. Adding annual rye grass helps. As does light tilling.

When I get a weed issue in my hayfields, I spray them with 2-4-D (Buteryac) which don't impact alfalfa or grasses, just noxious weeds. Of course the stuff ain't cheap but good stuff isn't.