6 month wait for raw manure spread on the plot before planting?

[Samuel1988]

Evening all,

Today I unexpectedly ended up with acquiring around 20 bags of raw horse poo so I decided to spread it on a few areas on my plot (and not dig it in as I have heard the hay/chippings robs nutrients from the soil) and let the weather and the worms and friends brake it down and put it into the soil.

I do recall reading somewhere that I will have to wait 6 months before I plant in it, is this correct?

I would have composted it first but my composters are nearly full and I still have a lot of weeding to do!

Many thanks,

Samuel

[polc1410]

Definitely 3 months would be good. Its not exactly planting season right now so probably by the time it arrives you'd be OK.

Issue is the acidity of the raw stuff, plus pulling nutrients away from the plants as it breaks down...

[alldigging]

You could have left it in the bags maybe.
Can you cover it up? If you could layer it up with other material then you'd be most of the way to having a lasagna bed. What about emptying out your full composters?

[Two_Sheds]

not dig it in as I have heard the hay/chippings robs nutrients...and the worms and friends brake it down and put it into the soil.

If you want worms, you need to keep digging to the minimum. Digging destroys worm tunnels. Happily, worms aerate the soil for you, with their tunnelling, as well as dragging mulches down into the soil (thereby digging it in)

my composters are nearly full

So you need to turn them then.
Do you have the black plastic daleks? Simply lift them up & off, put them somewhere else, and then fork all the unrotted stuff back in. You'll find this really reduces the volume for you, so you have room for more weeds.

You'll have a small pile of nearly-rotted stuff: this can be chucked on the beds as a mulch (again, don't bother digging it in, leave it for the worms to do)

[marchogaeth]

You could have left it in the bags maybe.
Can you cover it up? If you could layer it up with other material then you'd be most of the way to having a lasagna bed. What about emptying out your full composters?

If you still it on the soil now without covering it with cardboard or similar almost all that will happen is that it will be broken down in the rain and the nutrients in the liquid washed away leaving you with the vigorous bits that really do take a lot of breaking down in the soil and will really require nitrogen so depleting the soil.

Lasagne bed is a great idea. Mixing it in with the half rotted stuff in your daleks if you do what 2sheds says and empty them and turn them can help generate heat. Lots of things just think about keeping the fertilizer value.

[mothhawk]

I would have composted it first but my composters are nearly full and I still have a lot of weeding to do...

You'll have a lot more weeding to do in the spring - horse manure is the worst for undigested grass seeds, and if there's hay mixed in with it, that'll have a lot of grass seeds too.

[BertieFox]

Apart from the weed seed problem, there is nothing wrong at all with putting it on the surface, especially at this time of year, and everything wrong with digging it in. On the surface it will slowly break down and add humus to the soil while creating a mulch. Nitrogen robbery only occurs if it is dug in. The only 'risk' is that in a very wet year, like is now increasingly common, is that many of the nutrients will be washed away.

If you have a choice, compost it in a bin and use as a surface mulch in the spring when planting out, alternatively leave in place, drag back before seeding, and push back around plants as they grow away.

[Samuel1988]

I will check the darleks but I think most of it would not be composted as there was a large amount of green stuff (in the form of the weeds when getting my plot started) and not much brown stuff available to me.

As for the weeds one of my neighbours told me that the watering system on our plot is full of weed seeds so when your watering your spreading seeds yourself so I am not too fussed about weed seeds I will just ho ho ho it!

As for the nutrients leaching from the rain wouldn't this also be the case for layering finished compost etc?

I am, after the initial digging out the weeds, trying to adopt a no dig system so I figured that layering on top would be best, so the worms have something to work on and whilst the soil structure starts to return as I did read somewhere which fascinated me was that it is the soil micro fauna (in the form of bacteria etc) that produces a 'slime' which holds in the soil nutrients. This is why I am not going to dig in any compost etc and let the worms do it for me.

I figure animals have been dropping poop for millions of years which is why I opted to just spread it on a plot section as opposed for waiting for a while to build another composting container.

[WendyC]

How are there weed seeds in the water? It does sometimes look like that, as in a dry spell weeds only grow where you water, but that's because conditions are right for the soil ones to germinate not that they are in the water.

[Samuel1988]

The containers where water is pumped in are like open trough things so I presume seeds just get blown in. For me personally, I know the weed battle will never end so im not too fussed doing some extra murdering!!!!!