'Well rotted manure'....

[Miljea]

Do you buy this in bags from garden centres?

Or is it one of those Monty things where miraculously the local stable produces heaps of dung that somehow is already 'well rotted' 😁

I am creating a garden bed where there's heavy clay and need to improve the soil!

You can buy bags of manure from garden centres. If you only need a couple of bags a year it’s not too expensive. You can also get spent mushroom compost if you google which is good if you have a local supplier.

Also horse stables will have piles of the stuff, usually free if you take a bag and a shovel.

My local gardening Facebook group often has people advertising manure for anyone who wants it.

Also if you have a spare corner them collect leaves for leaf mould that’s really good on clay.

I have a large clayey allotment!

I get mine delivered from a local stables but I have bought bags from wickes in the past.
Some local stables do offer a help yourself pile but I am getting to old and knocked to want to shovel bags of houses shit so am happy to pay a few ££ for someone to deliver it bagged to my door.
Our local hardware store (a small independent that is a treasure trove of stuff you never knew you wanted or needed) also delivers for free compost and manure.
I like to support local where possible but know not everyone will have the option as it will be dependant on area.

A few years agoI put in large beds at the front of the house. I used all the clay soil from a lawn that was taken up to fit the new driveway. I have spent the last few years improving the clay.
One of the things that worked quite well is I bought pots of worms which were buried into the soil. The worms would wiggle through the soil helping break it down, leaving their castings behind them which add nutrients.

Thanks! But I'm still curious- if you go to a local stables, you get horse poo, not 'well-rotted manure', don't you? You'd need somewhere to leave it for a year to rot!

...and if you spread fresh manure on your flower beds, you also get millions of undigested seeds along with it. That's why it needs to be well rotted, preferably in a large heap - it's the heat of decomposition that kills off the lurking hay seeds and whatnot.

At my local stables they have a pile of the older manure then another pile of the more recent stuff. Most stables even if they only have one pile of manure will have a veyr big one and people go to the back/dig down to get the good stuff. You can tell it is well rotted as it doesn't smell really and is dark brown and crumbly. Call/FB message local stables and ask - people do all the time, they won't think you are odd or anything.

Also my local garden centre sells huge bags of well rotted manure

Our local stables made sure to say theirs was well rotted (& free) this week. About 2 hours after I'd bought 3 bags of the stuff from the garden centre

I also make sure I add it to my beds in the autumn so it can rot more before spring

It doesn’t have to be horse manure, although horse manure is good. It could be chicken, pig, sheep or cow. You could ask someone who just keeps a few animals or ask a farmer if you can have some off his midden.
Beware if the grass the animals have been eating or bedded on has been treated with weed killer it can affect some plants, I think roses.

@Miljea

Thanks! But I'm still curious- if you go to a local stables, you get horse poo, not 'well-rotted manure', don't you? You'd need somewhere to leave it for a year to rot!

I have horses and my own stables. Every couple of years we have the muck heap taken away. All that is left is the lower level of the muck heap, which we then start piling new muck on again. If you had happened to ask when it had just been removed you’d have been able to have got some bags of really well rotted manure. Last time it was six years old at the bottom..

Local councils also sometimes sell bags of soil conditioner if the collect green waste. And yes, you can tell the well rotted manure. It’ll usually be in The furthest pile as well...

We've just had a delivery of well rotted manure from Pukamuck

A stables near me sells big feed bags full of well rotted manure for £2 a bag.

I grab a couple of bags whenever I see it (they just stack the bags near the gate to the yard, and you put the money in an honesty box) and always give one to MIL.

It gives me great pleasure to see an 82 year-old with a smile like a kid at Christmas when presented with a bag of what is, after all, horse shit! She says it does wonders for her roses though.

If you can find a REALLY big muck heap then if you dig in a metre or so it will be basically hot composted, which means 'well rotted' or it will certainly be well rotted much quicker than cold composted heaps like you might find in a garden. The smaller the heap the slower, and colder composted it is. .

You need to be careful though as it will be HOT! Like you could actually burn yourself.

Can you put a note on a local FB page? You should get some good recommends and some idea of local etiquette. They want you to take it!

While I am on this thread, what is the etiquette like at stables during lockdown?

You could keep the sacks of poo for a year in a corner of the garden before using. I stack sacks of chicken poo up before using.

What are you intending to plant in the bed? If it’s roses, then definitely just buy some bags of rotted manure, don’t just dump fresh manure there - this can cause the roots to rot.

I want to grow something like a cottage garden border.

I got some from a stables. Look on freebie web sites like freecycle, and take rubble sacks or old compost bags with you. It doesn't smell or have bits of straw in it.

If you have a compost bin, worms will find it, but a friend gave me some worms a few years ago. I have two compost bins.

You shouldn’t need to add worms to manure. Our muck is riddled with them once you get under the surface layer of straw.

Try and find out what bedding the stables use. Gardeners seem to prefer straw bedding (apart from the mushroom farm who love shavings beds).

I wasn't saying to add worms to the manure, just the compost, but if you invite them they will come.

If you google you might find a supplier. If you are in Cambridgeshire then Madingley Mulch deliver giant sackfuls of it or mushroom compost to your house.

Saves going to the garden centre and lugging heavy bags back which disappear into your beds as if you hadn't bothered.

Google local stables, or farms. I've had deliveries of alpaca and goat manure (which can go straight on the garden) and there's a llama farm locally, though they don't deliver. It's all free.

Ask on your local facebook group if anyone has chickens, as well; they're hugely prolific pooers, though it does need to be well aged before application.

Mushroom compost can be very cost effective, because mushroom farms get through loads of it and need to get rid of it after a couple of seasons.

@Honeyroar

You shouldn’t need to add worms to manure. Our muck is riddled with them once you get under the surface layer of straw.

Try and find out what bedding the stables use. Gardeners seem to prefer straw bedding (apart from the mushroom farm who love shavings beds).

It was me who added worms but that was because I was reusing soil that had been a mossy lawn under an area of oak trees. The soil was heavy clay but had spend years in an area where not even grass would grow in it. I added the worms and then a top layer of my own garden compost so that the worms would drag the compost down and start to break up the heavy clay. The beds are large and it would have cost a fortune to have the old soil taken away and fresh topsoil in the beds. I don’t know if the worms helped but for £20 for a few pots of worms it was worth the chance it would speed up the breaking down of the clay. Three years later it is a rose garden.

Well, dug up the bed concerned today (needed a long soak in a hot bath!) and the soil is surprisingly good. But it's very, very clay'y so will need augmenting.

So I am going to have to source horse poo, and soil improved, I guess!