Uses for half-composted horse manure
How do you use up an entire
truckload of partially composted manure in a couple of hours? Start
out by topdressing --- applying bands of compost just far enough away
from plants so the high-nitrogen effluent won't burn the roots.
I put the manure on top
of mulch near sensitive plants like asparagus and underneath the mulch
near hungry plants like tomatoes. On top of mulch is safer but slower
since manure juices will take a while to leach through the straw and
into the soil. Be sure to stay at least three to four inches away from
plant stems either way.
Next, I spread an inch
or two of manure onto each fallow garden bed (on the right in the photo
above). Worms and cats will mix the manure in, resulting in rich, ready
soil in about a month. Similarly, the entirely new bed I created (on
the left in the photo above) will be ready to plant into by early to
mid July.
The only real question
left is --- can I have a little more please?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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"Worms and cats will mix the manure in" Yikes! Cats "playing" in the garden usually means they're (to put it bluntly) shitting in the garden and then you have the possibility of getting toxoplasmosis from that. From Wikipedia: "Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease caused by Toxoplasma gondii. Toxoplasmosis is usually spread by eating poorly cooked food that contains cysts, exposure to infected cat feces, and from a mother to a child during pregnancy if the mother becomes infected." . . . "Toxoplasma gondii is considered the second leading cause of foodborne-related deaths and the fourth leading cause of foodborne-related hospitalizations in the United States."