Would a bunch of horse manure mixed with stuff from my own backyard be a good compost?
Basically, I don't have alot to compost so could the horse poop be a good filler?
O'bliged, Rick
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rainbowgardener
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Horse manure can be valued INGREDIENT in compost. The idea of compost is to have a variety of ingredients and especially to have a mixture of high nitrogen and high carbon ingredients. Read the sticky at the beginning of this forum on "greens" and "browns." (Manure is an example of why those terms are misleading, wet and dry would be better, soft and hard would probably be better still. Manure is certainly brown to the eye, but it's a high nitrogen "green.")
So you need a lot of brown to put with it: Fall leaves should be coming soon (or already depending on where you are) and they are great, sawdust, brown paper bags, corn stalks and cobs, shredded black and white newspaper [not the slick papered advertisements or color print], crushed eggshell, torn up cardboard, ashes from wood, paper and charcoal, wood chips, straw, hay.
If you are adding browns, then you can also add your kitchen scraps, pulled weeds, etc, which are green, but will contribute to diversity and provide food for different kinds of detritovores (little critters that help break things down, like earthworms and pill bugs)
My suggestion if you have a bunch of manure, is have two piles, the manure and a regular compost pile. Keep feeding the manure pile into the compost pile a bit at a time, as you have other stuff to balance it out.
So you need a lot of brown to put with it: Fall leaves should be coming soon (or already depending on where you are) and they are great, sawdust, brown paper bags, corn stalks and cobs, shredded black and white newspaper [not the slick papered advertisements or color print], crushed eggshell, torn up cardboard, ashes from wood, paper and charcoal, wood chips, straw, hay.
If you are adding browns, then you can also add your kitchen scraps, pulled weeds, etc, which are green, but will contribute to diversity and provide food for different kinds of detritovores (little critters that help break things down, like earthworms and pill bugs)
My suggestion if you have a bunch of manure, is have two piles, the manure and a regular compost pile. Keep feeding the manure pile into the compost pile a bit at a time, as you have other stuff to balance it out.
Last edited by rainbowgardener on Tue Sep 22, 2009 4:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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gixxerific
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However! That manure will probably be mixed with sawdust|woodchips or straw both browns. So It might not be so bad. Where I get it it's 50\50, 60\40 brown vs. green/. So I'm saying when I get manure from the place I go it is more brown than green which is good for compost.
If not add leaves and maybe some lime. Or shredded paper that's a a good source of brown's to mix with manure.
And yes it is good for your garden, I have been adding it for 10+ years.
If not add leaves and maybe some lime. Or shredded paper that's a a good source of brown's to mix with manure.
And yes it is good for your garden, I have been adding it for 10+ years.
It all depends on how well the stables tend the horses. Some stables only clean the area with the visible HS and do not do a complete cleaning until the horse is standing in urine saturated bedding. Other stables do a complete cleaning every few days. If the stabled do it correctly, you can compost the bedding all by itself.
John
John