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Using Horse Manure Compost in the Fall
October 28th, 2008 by peter
October and November are ideal months for spreading compost on your pastures and for tilling into your garden soils in preparation for next Spring. Applying compost in the fall will result in the following benefits:
1. The compost will continue to breakdown to a humus rich substance, feeding beneficial micro-organisms in the soil and enhancing the “soil food web”.
2. The organic acids in the compost will help mobilize the soil particles, causing them to form aggregates called “soil peds”. rent a car bulgariaThis has the effect of loosing the soil (i.e., increasing soil porosity) and enhancing infiltration and moisture retention during the low rainfall months.
3. This loosening effect also enables plant roots to reach further down into the soil, resulting in healthier plants along with decreased soil erosion.
4. As the soil begins to warm up again next spring, the soil biology will come alive, the nutrients in the compost will be released and the plants will thrive. [Note: Spring is the worst time to get back on the pasture with farm equipment because of the likelihood of soil compaction. If you spread the compost in the fall, the job will already be done and you will not run this risk.
5. This strategy also applies to spreading compost in your landscape areas and vegetable garden.
I recently took a trailer load of 60-day old horse manure compost to our family friends’ home for use in their garden - and as an experiment, we screened the mix on a ½-inch screen. It took approximately 45 minutes for us to screen two cubic yards and to move the coarse and fine fractions with a wheel barrow to respective holding piles in the back yard.
What we learned is that the ½-inch plus “lumps and bumps” comprised about 1/3 of the total volume and that the remaining 2/3 was mostly fine wood particles. My operating theory is that the majority of the nutrients are contained in the “lumps and bumps” and so I suggested tilling this material into their vegetable garden and spreading around the base of their landscaping plants. In turn, I suggested that the fines be used as a mulch or weed barrier in their landscaping. I will be doing laboratory testing on these two fractions this winter to learn more about how they differ in nutrient value.
2 Responses to “Using Horse Manure Compost in the Fall”
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Edith… our primary objective with composting is to exceed 131 degrees F throughout the pile for at least 3 days in order to destroy pathogens and parasites in the mix. This is really quite easy to do, with temperatures often as high as 160 degrees for a week or two. Research and practical experience also indicates that these same temperatures destroy virtually all weed seeds, even those with hard seed coatings that can survive for decades in the soil.
An easy way to check for viability of weed seeds in compost is to fill a clear container with ~1/2 inch of moist compost and place it in a window sill for a week or two. I like to use the pre-cooked (i.e. rotisserie) chicken containers that you can buy at the grocery store (black bottoms with clear tops).