Free manure

[TZ-OH6]

FYI--I stopped out to our county fairgrounds today and asked about manure. There was a building-sized pile left over from the fair last month. They said take whatever you want whenever you want. The fairgrounds stables race horses too so there is a year round source.

[dice]

You might ask them if they lime the stalls (to hold down odors, etc).
Manure and shavings from limed stalls can raise the pH
when a garden is amended with it (which might be a good
thing or not for any individual garden bed, depending on
initial pH).

( http://www.rngr.net/Publications/tpn...31_33.pdf/file

Ignore the goofy-looking URL, it is still a .pdf file when you click
on it from a web browser.)

[TZ-OH6]

Good to know.

They don't do that here because it is in a rural setting where the odor isn't a problem but I could see where big tracks would want to do that due to the paying public always being present. Our track is mostly for harness racing training.


Hydrated lime-treated manure would have a white dust on it so it would be easy to spot.

[dice]

Hydrated lime-treated manure would have a white dust on it so it would be easy to spot.

Maybe. I notice that a light dusting of lime becomes invisible
pretty fast in the garden once it gets wet. The same thing
could happen with lime on manure or shavings. Stables that
use lime probably spread shavings around in the stalls, sprinkle
the lime on it, then the horse and grooms tramp around on it
until the stall gets cleaned out. How visible it is after that
perhaps depends on how much lime they used.

I have asked people with horses if they use lime in their stalls.
So far the answer has been "no", so maybe it is not that
common a practice, just something to watch out for if you
already have close to neutral pH soil.