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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >I'm interested in seeing what the new people's manure pile looks like.
> Hope it's some aged stuff, too.
> 

For several years I went by or went to a stable whose manure pile had been 
there for six or eight years undisturbed.  I hauled countless pu-loads onto 
the 
garden and corn plots.  Then from another horse barn I had the opportunity to 
get one or two loads a week where someone from here was going there anyway.  
In other words, only the extra gas to haul a load over what it would take for 
the empty truck ... no time or dedicated trip involved.  But it was fresh 
stall 
manure with the bright new wood shavings.

Wisdom had always said that one should leave the manure in a compost heap at 
least a year, and in  order to digest the shavings and chips, maybe three to 
five.  I had a tendency to agree since years ago I got some 25-30 tons of 
sawdust delivered (where the sawmill just wanted a place to dump it) and no 
new 
sawdust has been added in 12 years.  Some of it still looks like fresh wood 
and 
what I used as mulch would take about three years to decompose.

None the less, I used the raw stable material directly on the garden beds.  
This is what I found.  Owing, I am guessing, to the presence of nitrogen 
mixed 
copiously in with the wood shavings, a 10" dressing of raw stable gleanings 
decomposes entirely into black duff in four to six months on the garden soil. 
 
If it is thicker than that, there is a layer in the middle that stays largely 
decomposed.

So during the (hideously dry) fall and winter, I have put the manure 'in 
situ'  on fallowed beds 20" or more thick.  The bottom, in conact with the 
soil, 
rots into compost in  a very short time.  Some of the beds are turned during 
the winter and so most of the manure rots.  Those that are not turned will 
have 
the top 10" or so removed in the spring to use as mulch elsewhere and the 
bottom rotted part mixed in lightly with the soil.

Also during the spring and early summer the corn and potatoes that were in 
rows rather than beds or hills had the alley between rows filled with the raw 
manure some six inches or so thick after the corn and potatoes were hoed and 
hilled for the last time.  It greatly boosted yield and by harvest time you 
could 
not distinguish any of the manure from the soil.

Another trick I used was that when these in situ piles of manure hosted all 
manner of fungus, I'd take a few forkfuls of the actively decomposing manure 
and innoculate the new beds.

So far my conclusion is that manure from horse barns reeking with urea, 
amonia, and all other forms of nitrogen decomposes far faster than sawdust or 
wood 
shavings without it.

James