A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion Landscape trials and triumphs Remember my poo??

Do you remember months and months ago when I got my truck load of horse poo? Well, I never got it spread out. So, I have a pile of poo next to the house. The good thing about this is that I'm sure the ground under this pile will be GREAT for a shade garden come this spring or summer. The bad part is that I am not sure what exactly I need to do now. I remember talk of the poo possibly being too hot come spring to plant in.....any thoughts about this? I decided that I have enough poo to shape the bed around the rhododendron bushes (that survived their insane haircut), but I would really like to be able to plant things in the poo also! LOL. It isn't overly cold outside today and I'm thinking about actually spreading the poo today so that the ground that it sits on will maybe be a little more ready to till come the spring.

Am I thinking about this correctly???

what does your poo smell like now?

That is a good question of Cricket's.
Other good questions are how warm is the manure? Did it stay 'hot' all winter? Did the snow melt there first? Is it still warm in the middle now?
If it stayed 'cooking' all these months it means it has been breaking down and it could be ready to spread. The organisms have been doing the proper thing to it. If it still has a very strong manure smell it may be still too hot and will burn most things you try to plant in it. You may not know until you dig into it to see how it is inside there.
Was it mixed with a lot of straw or sawdust bedding when it arrived? That carbon would be good for the breakdown of it too.

I don't notice any smell from it at all.....I haven't noticed what the snow did on it since it is at the side of the house that I do not pay attention to. I do remember seeing snow sitting on the pile at some point. It was mixed with a good amount of straw and sawdust. I've read a few articles that describe what a beneficial amount would be and it sounds like what I got from the horse farm. I'm eating lunch right now, but when I'm done I'll put shoes on and go poke it with a shovel to see what happens.

If it is still pretty hot, would it be at all beneficial to spread it where the bed is going to be?....or is it better to just leave it in the pile?

If it's still hot in the interior, leave it be...it's cooking, and wil benefit from cooking another week or 2. You could use from the outsied of the pile without hurting anything. Once cooled, the whole pile wil be good to use. Just use common sense and don't pile any against plant stems ro plant directly in the poo. Mixed into the soil right away and allowed to 'mellow', it will be fine to use come time to plant tomatoes, corn, etc.

Thanks! I never did get outside to poke at the pile. I'll make sure I get out there today to see what is going on out there.