Mountains of Shit

It's spring!

It's time to get ready to garden!

It's time to make any last improvements on garden space before planting!

And what does that mean?

Lots of carrying around of odd things in the car...


What you see above is a pitchfork and a mix of plastic tubs for the first trip out to a nearby horsefarm, where they give away free manure. Free VERY WELL COMPOSTED manure! That "very well composted" part is VERY important!!! If you want to add the stuff directly to your garden space shortly before planting, you need to know that the manure etc is VERY well broken down. If it's not, it'll be too "hot" still - or too fresh. It'll burn your plants, and most likely kill them off. In this case, we're talking more like chemical burns - not temperature burn. I'd have to do some reading up before spouting facts about how and why it's bad for your plants to have the fresh stuff....just trust me.

Now in the past I've gotten deliveries of slightly composted stuff directly to the backyard - and that's WOOOONDERFUL! But in those cases, I either new there was going to be time for it to break down in the in-ground bed, OR it went straight into the compost bin to break down with all our kitchen scraps, yard waste, etc. And I wouldn't turn this stuff down - ever!! But I want to really improve my soil lickity-split before I start the spring tilling, the turning of the soil in the raised beds, and before planting. So I head out to Sunbeau Valley Farm in Ravenna, where they have free manure, or it's $2 if you want them to load it. I don't have anything for them to load it into - that would be something like a pick up. So instead, I go scoop my own...

And as you can see, there's quite a bit of poop! Poop to the left...


...and poop to the right!


This time they even had a shovel out there in the mountains of manure - but I QUICKLY learned after my first time years ago - shovels do NOT work as well as pitchforks. It's A LOT less work if you use a pitchfork for this sort of scooping. Shovels get too much resistance...


When I said this stuff was well composted, I meant it. I don't know if it's more than a year old - it very well could be - but it honestly doesn't smell or look like you're standing next to piles of horse shit as tall as me. Instead it looks like you're standing next to piles of soft, damp, crumbly black gold. If anything, it smells earthy. There are no solid equestrian turds falling out (at least not the pile I went to). You could roll around in the stuff and NOT feel like you were in poop.

Ok, maybe I'm overexaggerating a bit...but these worms don't seem to mind one bit!


That's just part of one scoop's worth of the manure, and look how many worms I got (and those are the ones that hadn't already burrowed down into it for protection!). So - BONUS! - in addition to getting this stuff that's great for the soil quality, I'm bringing home HUNDREDS of worms (and who knows how many worm egg cases are in there!) - so I'm stocking my supply of backyard workers!

Here's another view of the piles just to give you some idea. There's a lot of straw in that batch over there - I'm not sure it's broken down as much? You can see a bulldozer path through it - I'm guessing that cut-through pile is about 3/4 my height? I've talked to the farmer before - he's said he would deliver a truckload to me for about $50, but I'm not guaranteed to get all super-composted stuff...I'd like get a mix of the primo stuff with some more fresh stuff. It's more work, but by going out there myself, I get more control over what I'm bringing home (and it's cheaper!).


And I'm HOPING that by getting the older stuff, I'm ensuring any weed seeds which would've passed through the horses are already killed (horses are notorious for NOT digesting weed seeds - so you can be sprinkling weed seeds all over your space as you fertilize it - trust me, I've done this!) Also, since I saw all those worms in the composted manure, I know it was around long enough that if the horses were treated for worms, any deworming drugs had time to break down....this is one less bad thing I have to worry about adding to my own soil!

Here's the back of my car, now loaded with six tubs full'a shit. That's about 150 gallons - I don't even know what it weighs!

I took these home, and dumped four into the ex-strawberry in-ground bed that's going to be home to asparagus and raspberries in about a month. Asparagus are supposed to LOVE this stuff! The other two tubs went into one of the raised beds.

Anyhow....we've had rain since I got this stuff... I want to go back later this week to get more, but I'm not looking forward to scooping/lifting WET compost - that'll be EXTRA heavy, and I've already done enough wear and tear on the back this week (trees, compost, racquetball). So after we've had a few days of warm, dry weather, I plant to head out more to get more of the black gold for the garden beds...and who knows, maybe even for some of the landscaping beds as well!

Oh! And for those of you in the local area who want to know where this good stuff is, I created a map for Tina at work since she expressed interest in it... So see how this works for you (you're going to have to zoom waaaay in to get to the local area - it's showing a view of the entire USA. Make sure you zoom in to the area with the blue pointer showing. Just double click near the blue pointer, which will center it, then double click near the blue pointer again for a zoom, and keep double clicking to zoom in another level. I don't know why the map doesn't just zoom in on the area I've marked.).


View Horse manure!! in a larger map