use of well rotted horse manure

I asked this question in Soil and Composting, but received no reply so I'll try here. Can I use well rotted horse manure as a top dressing on any vegetable or ornamental?

I'm sorry no one answered you, I use it all the time on my veg and flower garden and have wonderful supply of veggies.

as long as it has agged well then you are ok.

Jan

Well-aged horse manure is one of the best amendments you can use. Happy gardening!

I get it from a family that raises horses in the next county. I throw it on my compost pile, so it just mixes in with the leaves, vegie scraps, etc. Several months later, it ends up in my garden.

At Everland Farm in SE Ohio, we trade 6 acres of "come-cut-and-bale" hay for two p/u truckloads of horse manure. Early on, my husband spreads the manure over our entire kitchen garden. Lets it set for @ wk. Then the manure is tilled in and sets for @ wk. After our tomatos (especially) are planted and beginning to grow, we mulch w/the composted manure. Late fall, everything is tilled in as we put the garden to bed. We've been using this regimen for 5 years now and it has improved the sandy, lifeless soil of SE Ohio remarkably. It's a great natural fertilizer. Go green!

everlandfarm

I use to live in sagamore hills and when I started gardening there that horse manure was the only thing that improved my hard clay soil there.

Hope the rain has finally stopped for you folks up there, while we were there finishing our packing the rain just drove me nuts. In the 8 years of living up northing this year was the worse for spring rain. Our whole acre was almost completely under water.

now we live in Florida and I've found a local source for my horse manure here and I'm thrilled.

Jan

I use composted horse manure this spring to lighten my soil and it has worked quite well. I have/had a couple of concerns. First, the bedding used by the horse owner and was primarily coarse sawdust so I worried it would steal nitrogen from the soil as the sawdust continued to compost, Just in case, I've added extra nitrogen and have had good results so far. Secondly, I read in last month's Mother Earth News about problems with certain herbicides used to keep weeds out of feed crops, that pass through the animal (horses), remain active in the manure and seriously affect garden crops when the manure is tilled into the garden. Just to be safe I asked the owner where his feed came from and he said it was his own and he didn't use herbicides, so I guess I'm OK on that count also. Just a couple of things to consider when considering using a great additive to the garden.

Thanks for this info. I have top quality composted horse manure and want to use it in my new garden. Soil is mostly clay so I decided to mix clay and manure 1st and finally add manure as top dressing (around 2 inches). I tried to find answer if this is ok from Finnish forums and even asked gardener! but everyone here said I should not do that. After reading this post I know I don´t need to add clay(with unwanted roots) or bought ground into my manure top-dressing. Thanks again!

@ meadowyck: We've actually had 4 solid days w/o rain. Instead the mercury's climbed into the upper 80s. Way too hot for end of May hereabouts. We've seen this happen here before and our fear is that once the rain stops that'll be it and the excessive heat will predominate. If we don't irrigate all efforts at kitchen gardening will be for nought. This was easier when I was 30. ; )

everlandfarm,

I hear ya on it being easier when we were 30+, now a days the mind gets more movtivated than this body can...LOL

glad to hear the rain has let up, and hoping the heat doesn't destroy everything.

Jan