Manure, manure everywhere. Compost?

[patandchickens]

cleaning my goat house out of all the soiled hay and pellets and dumping it on top of my snowed in raised beds. In approx. 2 weeks I'll put the raised bed covers on (the polytunnels) and as soon as the snow starts to melt, I'll start digging in the manure from the goat house.

Just a word of warning, from someone who had that same bright idea a while back -- bedding is an excellent insulator, in the WRONG DIRECTION for what you want in an early-spring garden. Once you are ready to melt your beds off and get them ready to work, I very highly recommend raking/shovelling all that material back OFF them (you can pile it aside, or in a part of the garden that will not be planted very early) so the bare earth gets sun-warmed to thaw as quickly as possible. Otherwise, if you put all that nice amendment stuff on the bed and LEAVE it there, the ground stays frozen hard for much longer! (Obviously once the ground is thawed deeply enough, *then* you can pile that material back on and till/dig it in)

After I learned this the hard way my first winter gardening in this cold a climate I *did* at least also learn to use it to advantage -- I deliberately insulate a roadlike path for the horses from the shed to the higher drier parts of the paddock, by waiting til sometime in March and then starting to dump hay sweepings, stall cleanings, coop cleanings, etc in a wide swath where I want the ground to stay frozen. I usually get a depth of maybe 12" or more. It works *beautifully* to keep mud at bay (on that 'road') for an extra 3-4 weeks at least, by which time the surrounding ground has dried off enough to be more usable by the horses. In a perfect world I would then rake the shavings etc back off the 'road' and compost them. In the real world, I almost always leave them where they are (now somewhat worked into the starting-to-melt-under-them ground *anyhow*, and call it soil amendment <g>

Pat

 

[lupinfarm]

cleaning my goat house out of all the soiled hay and pellets and dumping it on top of my snowed in raised beds. In approx. 2 weeks I'll put the raised bed covers on (the polytunnels) and as soon as the snow starts to melt, I'll start digging in the manure from the goat house.

Just a word of warning, from someone who had that same bright idea a while back -- bedding is an excellent insulator, in the WRONG DIRECTION for what you want in an early-spring garden. Once you are ready to melt your beds off and get them ready to work, I very highly recommend raking/shovelling all that material back OFF them (you can pile it aside, or in a part of the garden that will not be planted very early) so the bare earth gets sun-warmed to thaw as quickly as possible. Otherwise, if you put all that nice amendment stuff on the bed and LEAVE it there, the ground stays frozen hard for much longer! (Obviously once the ground is thawed deeply enough, *then* you can pile that material back on and till/dig it in)

After I learned this the hard way my first winter gardening in this cold a climate I *did* at least also learn to use it to advantage -- I deliberately insulate a roadlike path for the horses from the shed to the higher drier parts of the paddock, by waiting til sometime in March and then starting to dump hay sweepings, stall cleanings, coop cleanings, etc in a wide swath where I want the ground to stay frozen. I usually get a depth of maybe 12" or more. It works *beautifully* to keep mud at bay (on that 'road') for an extra 3-4 weeks at least, by which time the surrounding ground has dried off enough to be more usable by the horses. In a perfect world I would then rake the shavings etc back off the 'road' and compost them. In the real world, I almost always leave them where they are (now somewhat worked into the starting-to-melt-under-them ground *anyhow*, and call it soil amendment <g>

Pat

Hehe I figured as much. I stick a poly cover on the beds to warm up the soil fairly quick, but I probably will pull it all off then work it back in eventually. Gotta love Canada

 

[Wolf-Kim]

The only reason I considered pallets was because I don't stall horses. I would just be picking up poo out of the pasture periodically, so I guess it could be considered mostly aged.

I momentarily forgot about the heat escape in the chicken coop for composting. I'll steer clear of that.

Thanks everyone.

-Kim