> Hi Kylie,
> I, unfortunately, learned the hard way that very fresh horse manure is
> enough to burn plants to death - I'm the only person I know who can
> kill rhubarb!
> The main reason I've heard for composting horse poo before using it on
> the garden is weed seeds. Horses are not ruminants, like cattle,
> sheep and goats, and the horse gut processes food more quickly and
> less efficiently than a ruminant gut. As a result, a lot more weed
> seeds get through in viable condition. The heat of a well constructed
> compost heap is thought to be sufficient to kill any weed seeds that
> make it through Dobby's gut.
hm. when i get my next load i'll see if i can compost some, just to see how
it goes (i don't think i'm the world's best composter, quite frankly). but i
really didn't have weeds from the last lot - i spread it over the potatoes &
things like sheet mulch almost, & not a weed to be seen! (when i told my
neighbour she seemed surprised as well - so i don't know how unusual that
might be!!)
my neighbour amazes me in that she has loads of horse poo & NEVER uses it! i
say she's doing me a huge favour but she says i'm doing her a huge favour!!
> Tish
> - Also fighting the good fight against marauding wallabies
last evening they, and the rabbits(!), were gambolling about under the
trees, like in a picture book for goodness sake. it was very cute but also
completely _enraging_ :-))
>> it goes (i don't think i'm the world's best composter, quite
> frankly).
> Dont' beat yourself up about not being a great composter :-)) The old
> traditional way of composting (bins that need turnign regularly) is
> for the birds IMHO. I now do lots of differnt types of composting and
> they all work - sheet composting, trench composting (ocassionally),
> tumble bins and anaerobic bins (the ones that sit on the ground opena
> t the bottom with a lid on top). the traditional bins are now just
> used as colelction points for composting material, but even if I don't
> get roudn to using that material in the other forms of compost, it too
> eventually rots down into usable 'compost'.
this was my thinking - it won't go to waste, it's just a question of how
bloody long it might take. i am keen to get a tumbler, because that's
something i know i can put the (minimal) effort into to get it right so i
have my end product, such as it might be, pretty quickly & easily.
tbh, i found it best when we were just burying our compostibles directly in
the ground. truly! but then i got this idea that if i could make lots of
loverly compost, it would be terribly useful (which is also true - hence my
interest in a tumbler). i find it really hard to get bulk though -
everything breaks down sooner or later, but still only leaves me with about
a teaspoon of compost <g>.
>> my neighbour amazes me in that she has loads of horse poo & NEVER
> uses it! i
>> say she's doing me a huge favour but she says i'm doing her a huge
> favour!!
> I have the same situation with my neighbour. Licky for us that they
> don't know any different.
true, but afaik her horse could keep the entire road in poo with no effort
;-) i am trying to turn her around about a few things... the other day i was
bemoaning how sad i was that my yellow sticky traps (which i put up for
these little black flies that were all over everything [midges?] but now
thankfully eradicated) were beginning to catch lots of predator species - i
got a little lizard, hence the conversation - hoverflies & lizards &
ladybirds etc. she didn't know what hoverflies were, & so couldn't
understand why i'd be distressed that i was getting so many of them. i
briefly explained they're a "good bug", she said "there's no good bugs
except ladybirds!!" but even so, i'm happy just to sow the seeds of
thinking-about-things - what else can we do? and you never know where
thinking-about-things will take a person. as long as there's lots of horse
poo left for us, of course. ;-)
kylie
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> I, unfortunately, learned the hard way that very fresh horse manure is
> enough to burn plants to death - I'm the only person I know who can
> kill rhubarb!
> The main reason I've heard for composting horse poo before using it on
> the garden is weed seeds. Horses are not ruminants, like cattle,
> sheep and goats, and the horse gut processes food more quickly and
> less efficiently than a ruminant gut. As a result, a lot more weed
> seeds get through in viable condition. The heat of a well constructed
> compost heap is thought to be sufficient to kill any weed seeds that
> make it through Dobby's gut.