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gixxerific
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Adding manure in the early spring is it safe?

Well like the title say's is it safe to add half to mostly but not all the way composted manure to your beds in early spring? This would be tilled in. I have been doing this for years but recently heard some things about it that might change my mind on doing such things.

THG this is aimed at you but I would like everybody's opinion on this matter.

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Sage Hermit
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if by "safe" you mean "not safe" then yeah its 100% safe! I'd do it. Seriously though why add manuere to your beds I don't get it?

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gixxerific
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Sage Hermit wrote:if by "safe" you mean "not safe" then yeah its 100% safe! I'd do it. Seriously though why add manuere to your beds I don't get it?
For fertilizer. To be quite honest your post has me a bit confused. I think you said it's not safe. I was thinking about ecoli. But the way you worded it I get

If Safe = Not Safe
Than
100% Safe = 100% Not Safe.

The Helpful Gardener
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Just not good practice, Gixx; but I suspect that you supected that. So if suspect means know, and know means NO, then suspect, by all means...

:?

No means NO. It's just gambling, and I'm not a gambler...

Don't mind Sage; that's just the sound of one hand clapping. You don't want to know about the other hand.

I suspect :wink:

HG

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gixxerific
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The Helpful Gardener wrote:Just not good practice, Gixx; but I suspect that you supected that. So if suspect means know, and know means NO, then suspect, by all means...

:?

No means NO. It's just gambling, and I'm not a gambler...

Don't mind Sage; that's just the sound of one hand clapping. You don't want to know about the other hand.

I suspect :wink:

HG
For some reason I Do understand all that.

Thanks THG and Sage

You keep shutting down all the things I do in my garden. In a good way though I might add. This year is gonna be interesting to say the least. And I know everything will be alright I just like to worry and over-complicate things too much. :)

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AHHH, now you are getting it. This is really simple...

I mean, rot and toil and I can start off on phospholipids can dance on the head of a pin, but you don't need to know that stuffto make your garden work. A lot of folks make a great deal of money seeling things ytou don't need, so they aren't about to start telling the whole truth, or even part of it.

With what we have been throwing in our garbage and burying in landfills, we have the tools to make compost tha tenriches and enlivens our soils. Good soil is living soil. Add back the life, and your soil sorts ITSELF out. You don't need to do more than that...

COMPOST your manure; use compost to enrich your soil... (it does a better job anyway; manure tends to volatize without sufficient biology in place anyway). Good soil is more about greens to browns and fungal to bacterial ratios than anything you can buy in a bag...

HG

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gixxerific
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I'm good Scott, just a little nervous being that my whole garden just about will be seeded this year for the first time, we shall see how that goes. My plan is in place now though. I might need another lighting system to accommodate though.

But........ Here we go again. I just noticed today after the snow finally melted that there are chunks of horse doo doo popping up still. I suppose they will be fine, I hope cause I'm not picking them out. I can't remember exactly but it was put in about 4-5 months ago. My compost is not quite done at all either and that is in my garden so it must be used or moved before spring.

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breaking up the horse apples with a hoe might be recommended. That is if you want to make sure that no anaerobes get a foothold; the inside of a fecal nugget is prime time for bad guys...

HG

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applestar
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So why NOT go "apple picking" -- a term that horse people use, I found out when I was work-leasing a mini-horse at a boarding stable :lol: If you mix them into your compost pile (along with some more browns to balance them out) while the snow/pile are melted, they should help kick up your compost pile into higher gear. They're MUCH easier to pick out if you have a manure fork [img]https://www.bowlinfarms.com/shoppics/05forks.jpg[/img] But maybe you can substitute your rake if you hold it upside down?

BTW -- when I joined a horse folk forum at the time, I quickly learned that it was by a very slim margin of luck that I didn't name myself "horseapple" but rather "applehorse" -- thereby escaping a great deal of greenhorn embarrassment. :roll:

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applestar
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We're experiencing a mid-January thaw around here as well. I'm thinking I should go collect some finished compost for a batch of seed starting mix before every thing freezes up again.

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gixxerific
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I did add quite a bit to the compost back when I got it but I can't see why I couldn't do it again.

Thanks for you responses. I'm really not too worried. I'm not dead yet and have been adding in the early spring my whole gardening career.

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Yer right, Gixx. PROBABLY won't kill you...

HG

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gixxerific
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The Helpful Gardener wrote:Yer right, Gixx. PROBABLY won't kill you...

HG
Here we go again. :P :lol:

Just to clarify I was talking about the "horse apples" in my garden that were put there last year, not that I'm going to add more manure this spring.

peace

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Oh.

Last years stuff is PROBABLY safe :lol:

(break up those apples to be sure) :wink:

HG

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Farmer Dave
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I thought I would put in my two apples.... I use horse and cow manure every year and have for many years as we have a horse and cow. I put it directly on the beds in the fall as sheet compost. By the new year I start piling it up and making compost, we get a wheel barrow a day. In the spring I dig or till in the manure and there are lots of visible apples. I let it break down for 2-4 weeks then add a little compost and plant. Most of the manure is unrecognizable but there are still a few apples left. I do caution against using this technique to close to planting as it will not break down enough and it will deplete your soil of nitrogen as well as may have some unfriendly pathogens.
I wouldn't spend a lot of time picking out the apples as they will eventually break down through watering and tilling.
Good luck let us know how it grows.
Farmer Dave

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gixxerific
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I'm waiting for a warm day to stir things up a bit. It's a bit frozen here. :(

But than I will be ordering some good compost, HG know's what I'm talking about.

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Most of the horse manure I use is well composted. However, several years ago I decided to put a load directly on two of my raised beds in the fall. The next year I had a terrible time with weeds. If you use horse manure directly, have you had weed problems? If not, what do you do to minimize this situation? Thanks.

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gixxerific
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vermontkingdom wrote:Most of the horse manure I use is well composted. However, several years ago I decided to put a load directly on two of my raised beds in the fall. The next year I had a terrible time with weeds. If you use horse manure directly, have you had weed problems? If not, what do you do to minimize this situation? Thanks.
Really nothing you could do except mulch it. That's why cow manure would be a better option since they have 4 stomachs the seeds don't make it through.

But to be quite honest I have never really had a big problem with weeds, not saying I never had any just with a little control it's no big deal.

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Correct, Gixx!
Horse manure is famous for its pass-through of weeds; the horse's digestion system is not very efficient which is why they need so much chow.

Cow's on the other hand are very efficient, with complete breakdowns to nearly molecular levels, and with excellent biological innoculation by the time it's done. Four stomachs are better than one.

HG



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