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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Lynn Wigglesworth wrote:
> My 'barn scrapings' is manure with waste hay. I put it in a big pile during 
> the summer. The next spring I spread it out a little (still 2' thick) and 
> plant winter squash on it. The squash doesn't seem to mind that it isn't 
> completely composted yet, but the weeds haven't found the pile, so it's 
> carefree gardening at it's best. Between the composting and the dark 
> sun-absorbing color, it stays warmer than the rest of the garden. I get a 
> good crop of winter squash for no work from a pile of compost I wouldn't 
> otherwise be using yet.
>
> The next spring I'll either move the compost where I need it or till it in 
> where it is and make a new bed; it makes a nice productive bed for a couple 
> years before it needs anything added.


That is why all my waste hay(from the goats when I had them, and now 
from the chicken coop/next boxes) goes into my monster raised beds.  I 
also get waste hay from my friends' horse pasture, or my own if her 
horses are down here. I can plant right into the stuff and it breaks 
down into blackness inside of a year.  It is usually a couple of months 
between the time I load the bed and when I plant in it, though.
It's been a long time since I raked out a horse stall.  These days, I 
usually rake it up in the pasture, I try to get as much urine soaked 
hay(from hay ring) and horse poop as I can.  I fork and shovel it into 
the bed of the pickup, drive home, and fork/shovel it out, straight into 
the beds.  My friend is building a barn for her 3 horses and donkey, so 
I will have an easier time of it soon.
My observation is that plain horse poop in a pasture rots into near 
nothingness in less than a month.  It dries out, crumbles apart, and it 
spread out by rain.  Hay seems to hold it together a bit, and the hay 
absorbs all the moisture from the poop and urine.  The juice isn't lost 
to the ground.  Wood chips would do the same job, but wood takes longer 
to decompose than hay.

If you use rather hot poop in the bottom of a trenched bed, it will warm 
up the soil and you can plant in the soil above it.  By monster beds are 
so tall that the heat of decomposition at the bottom warms the planting 
zone so much that I can cheat and plant up to 2 weeks earlier in the 
Spring.  When I do that, especially with squashes, I have noticed that I 
get more squash in the house before the squash bugs emerge.


--
http://erthnsky.blogspot.com/
EarthNSky Farm NW Georgia