What should I do with 1000 litres of horse manure?
I have managed to lay my hands on a free and apparently inexhaustible supply of horse manure from my cousin's riding school. I know this is gold for composting but I wanted to get some tips on how to use it to my best advantage. Some is new, some is aged up to 5 years - I seem to have a choice.
I have a lot of very hard, almost barren clay soil that just about manages to grow grass and shows deep fissures when dry. I am excavating areas of this and moving it to other places in the garden to do some landscaping and also to prepare beds for veg. I imagine I should use the younger manure to mix with the smashed up clay (it is a pick axe job!) but wondered if there was anything else I should mix in with it? Someone is offering me wood-shavings; is this a good plan to mix in?? I do not mind waiting a few years while it breaks down...
The compost heap has been going well for the last 5 years but this is just grass and kitchen scraps. Any advice on how I can use the horse manure in the compost heap to my best advantage?
Lots of questions I know any advice appreciated!
Posts
The old stuff I'd use as a mulch. The younger stuff, add it in layers to you compost heap along with the wood shaving.
I've very jealous.
As your'e digging out the clay line the bottom of hole with a thick layer of the fresher stuff, then you can add back some of the clay to cover it. Then add the older stuff on top. By next year you should have some decent digable soil. The wood shavings can go in as well, it'll all rot down quite quickly and the worms will have a field day.
don't we all just love worms?
Or is that just me?
VERY poor reporting of something that is no more than a stab in the dark "after a fair bit of head scratching, came to the conclusion that somehow the tomatoes had inadvertently suffered from spray drift, as they looked as though they had been treated with a lawn weedkiller." and then a quantum leap from what is a guess to a how it was done! Furthermore "HORSE manure" wasn't even featured in this "report" of a "stab in the dark"
You probably ought to know that IF a paddock that's to be used for grazing is sprayed with a broad leaf weed killer that stock is kept off it ordinarily for a minimum of 3 weeks. People tend to not want to kill their horses

We bed our horses on sawdust (wood shavings) and so ours comes ready mixed. It's REALLY exceptionally good for lightening up a clay soil and getting some good organic matter into the earth. I use tonnes of the stuff but then we've got a huge stockpile of it for free. My partner trains horses and runs an equestrian centre.
I love you pansyface.
not in a " let's get jiggy" kinda way, obviously
way too far
tee hee
Good advice Dave. Do you know what sort of ratios should I be thinking about and how much that matters? Also, how long do you think it would be before I can use that hole for planting?
(For some reason my 'quote' button does not work - probably a browser update needed.)
matt , don't even start us on the whole "quotes" thing