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| I wondered if it was a good idea to till in fresh horse manure, bedding, and wood chips? I think the clay soil could use some lightening up while the seeds are starting. (Yeah, I know the seeds could have been started earlier. I'm just getting back to gardening and learning the rhythm.)
The existing Massachusetts soil is all clay, fine enough to make pots. The very damaging October 2011 storm provided 4" of wood chips and more is available. A horse stable across the road has all the fresh horse poo and bedding I can haul. Aside:
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Follow-Up Postings:
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| Maybe. How much time will lapse after doing this will you allow before planting this bed? What is the ratio of manure to wood chips? Will you be tilling in enough of both to get the humus (residual organic matter) level up to about 6 to 8 percent? What is the humus level in that soil now? |
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- Posted by toxcrusadr (My Page) on Tue, May 22, 12 at 10:47
| It's all in the relative quantities. Too much manure will burn the plants. Not enough and the wood chips will sequester too much N and the plants will suffer. It's literally a crap shoot. :-] |
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- Posted by measure_twice z5 MA (My Page) on Tue, May 22, 12 at 16:27
| Humus level: near zero. Nada. It is, after all, clay. It is cost-prohibitive to truck in enough prepared humus. Not gonna happen. Time elapsed: 4 to 6 weeks for seedlings. Manure to chip ratio: There is an awful lot of chips on the ground. There would have to be an awful lot of manure to overcome both the chips and the horse bedding. Right now the chips are simply laying on top and providing effective mulch because they are so thick.
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- Posted by blazeaglory 10 SZ22 OC Ca (My Page) on Wed, May 23, 12 at 1:16
| Mix the chips with manure and compost it for a year then till it into your soil Or till it all into your soil and wait a year to plant anything. Lol I have read that fresh manure or manure in general in large quantities in unhealthy soil can cause more problems by adding too much salts. More salt than I think seedlings can handle? I would think to maybe compost it into organic matter in the clay or compost it and then add it to the clay, if you have the time. If not, I think it would be a crap shoot to add it all now and try to start seedlings in it. Now large more established plants might fare better than seedlings. I really dont know. |
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| Measure twice, you didn't say what the bedding material is. Most of the available N is in the bedding, which is used to mop up urine. Wheat straw is about the best for the purpose, and the best to incorporate, though other straws are OK. The price of straw has many stables using wood chips, shavings, sawdust or even a "pelletized" product thereof. That gives a high carbon content and will deplete N. All for the good, eventually, in most northeastern soils. If you have difficulty with seedlings, I'd plant a cover of buckwheat or legume and turn it in at 4-5 weeks. Next year or later in the season should correct conditions. The manure itself doesn't have much nitrogen(protein). The horse has consumed most of it and converted hay into an easier to incorporate form. It's a good humus builder. Chips as mulch are fine, but I prefer to break them down for a soil amendment by keeping a pile moist and letting fungal activity convert, similar to "hugelkultur".
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| You can bet the bedding is pine shavings. That's why fresh horse manure is nothing close to as valuable as it was when horses were bedded in hay or straw. So between that and wood chips I'd be pretty careful about tilling it in, even in clay. |
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- Posted by toxcrusadr (My Page) on Wed, May 23, 12 at 10:45
| Oh, and ask the horse owners if they use lime in the barns! The pH of that manure could be off the charts. It always pays to check. |
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- Posted by Strawberryhill 5a IL (My Page) on Wed, May 23, 12 at 11:28
| Thank you, measure_twice, for a great question. I asked the same question before. My neighbor ordered a pile of dirt mixed with horse manure for $2 extra per cubic yard. He has the best lawn, deep green in the 400 houses division here. Grass likes the alkalinity in the horse manure (stable here use lime to deodorize their stalls). Horse manure here has pH of 7.6 when fresh, and pH of 8 when it's well composted. Mushroom compost with horse manure is even higher in pH. I decided against dirt mixed with horse manure since I'm growing plants that prefer acidic soil: tomatoes and roses. My native soil is already alkaline at pH of 7.7 - but if your soil is neutral to acidic, then small amount of horse manure won't hurt. Last year I mixed fresh horse manure with heavy clay, it was nice and fluffy, so I kept adding more manure. When I planted the gallon-size roses, the leaves have brown spots (salt injury?). So I spent the ENTIRE DAY replacing the soil. For plant seedings? Here's Kentucky University research that showed poor performance of horse manure on seedlings. Their analysis of horse manure showed: pH of 8.21, 134 ppm nitrogen (1/4 the amount of cow manure), 64.4 ppm of phosphorus, a GIANT amount of potassium at 3,476 ppm, much less calcium at 118 ppm (versus 1,521 of cow manure), and a TINY amount of magnesium 54.7 ppm (compared to 309 of cow manure). See the link below for more info. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Organic fertilizers for Vegetable Transplant
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| Humus is the residual organic matter left in the soil after the Soil Food Web haas digested all they want. The SFW will continue digesting that humus if nothing better is offered. To get your soils humus level up you need to add more organic matter and that is compost or any other vegetative waste you can get, tree leaves are a good source as is the crop residue you have every year. Perhaps this video, about an hour and half, may be of some help. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Back to Eden video
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- Posted by measure_twice z5 MA (My Page) on Thu, May 24, 12 at 9:41
| I appreciate the information and many viewpoints. You guessed it, the horse bedding is sawdust. Yep, I know humus and compost having very loamy gardens decades ago. I simply added a foot of wood chips each year and next year they were broken down to an inch of black soil. Does this sound reasonable?: This year I will leave the thick layer of wood chips in place. The weeds are near zero. Past experience shows in one year the chips will rot down to a very thin layer The plot is large enough, so in a corner I will stack straw bales into a 3-sided compost bin. I will fill it with manure, bedding, kitchen scraps, fall leaves, and so on. Next year the compost and bales should be broken down enough to till right into the garden. If it needs acid, I'll find lots of pine needles or ask a coffee shop for a week of their grounds. Rinse, repeat. |
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- Posted by mackel_in_dfw (My Page) on Thu, May 24, 12 at 11:01
| Humus- "the indigestible remnants of organic material" Kimmsr- "the humus will continue to digest" If I was your real teacher, kimmsr, you'd be getting a regular knock on the knuckles- the problem with the online dispensery of that sort of discipline, is that the knucklehead never shows up for class, most of the time...nyuk nyuk nyuk.. Mackel |
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| You'll notice that in the Eden video, the guy who tilled the wood chips into his soil pretty much wrecked it for that year. Measure twice -- your plan (latest one) sounds good, all except the tilling part for next year. If you've got good compost in your bin by then, why not just pull back the wood chips a bit wherever you want to plant, and lay down some compost with your seeds or starts. That way your garden stays ready-mulched with wood chips, and you don't risk tilling them in too early and all the havoc that can cause. Also, then you can join the no-till club, and we have great parties :) |
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- Posted by mackel_in_dfw (My Page) on Thu, May 24, 12 at 12:27
| Op, in your soil type, the pH will always revert back toward acidic. Pine needles and coffegrounds are vegetative carbon sources, they don't measureably alter the soil pH, strange as it seems. I'll give you this, the oranic amendments to be careful with are anything that's not derived from a terrestrial plant material. Manure can do crazy things to nutrient balance and pH, when applied in excess or not mitigated sufficiently by the presence of browns. They say no more than twenty percent of total organic material should derive from an animal source. There's a lot of reasons for this, and it's a rule of thumb, but in a great number of soil types, a good one. You could still violate this rule, and in theory only your soil's recovery will take longer, though it's a much more forgivng soil type than ours, for example, due to it's natrual acidity and plenty of rainfall where you live. The other important thing to know that can slow down the soil's recovery time are browns incorporated into the soil that are too chunky. If optimal conditions are not what you seek, many of the cult members here have a driver's license, and will gladly steer you off the road fer ya... Mackel |
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| Measure, adding pine needles or coffee grounds will not affect the pH of your soil. Maple leaves have a pH of 3.2, Oak leaves 3.7 and pine needles 3.9, and when composted, or put down as a mulch, will end up with a near neutral pH. |
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| I use a tiller & compost with mulch, my garden bed do not get hard or turn to poor soil over the winter. Other then that mistreatment, the video was okay, nothing new , maybe a different angle, but still Organic compost in the garden. |
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