With the abundant supply of horse manure I have at my disposal there has been some creativity in alternative uses around the yard over the weekend.
A trial of overseeding lawn and top dressing with horse manure in a slow growing area has began. The area is quite sandy and bare with only some boring weeds and a little couch grass growing. After a spray down with wetting agent, a generous dose of lawn seed was spread, two wheel barrows filled with lumpy horse manure were dumped and spread to cover an area of about 9 square meters.
Should I have had a garden mulcher on hand I would have run the entire ute load through and spread evenly across the lawn. Not to be easily deterred, a quick hit with a low blade on the lawn mower (no catcher) pulverised the hell out of it and spread it evenly across the area, nice.
A good water with the sprinkler and we’ll wait and see how it all grows!
I’m keen to hear the tips have you got to get an old lawn onto the path to a greener future.
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9 Comments
While the “success at all costs” guy in me applauds your manure-mowing concept, the “I don’t want to deal with the laundry” guy asks: Do you get a lot of horse poop in your pants cuffs when you do this, or do you mow in shorts?
I’m a big fan of horse manure for all the stuff I grow. Having just secured a free source, I expect to be writing much about manure in upcoming blog posts at both Your Small Kitchen Garden and Your Home Kitchen Garden. I’ll be very interested to learn how your lawn responds to the manure treatment. If all goes well this season, I hope to smother part of my lawn with manure this season, and convert it into a planting bed.
Daniel – My mower has a flap at the back that you lift up to put the catcher on. It keeps most flying particulate under control. The poo is pretty dry when I mow it and I can dust off anything that might get on my clothes. The wife has not complained… YET!
I look forward to catching up on your horse poo adventures on your blogs.
Ben
We spread our manure over the pastures and lawn at our place. The best reults are from spreading fresh manure and dragging to break it up. Dried manure left in little lumps just sits there until it eventually breaks down, which can take awhile. But that fresh stuff might be too smelly at first for small areas. Pilling it up and allowing it to heat up and then spreading it works good. You can add red worms after it cools down and then you’d really have something.
I absolutely love this idea! Being a guy that loves my lawn I too applaud the lengths that you go to to fertilize your lawn. Don’t have access to any manure myself but if I lived in the country I would totally do this!
Keep the great ideas coming!
PS. Any updates on the success of this yet?
As I do not have any experience in growing grass and fertilizing the ground, I would follow your recommendations. I hope next summer I’ll have the lawn in front of my house covered with young green grass.
It sounds a great idea and should in time make the lawn great but my prob is my dog (for some disgusting dog reason) seems to like the taste of horse crap, makes a bee line for it as soon as he smells it
Did using the lawnmower do the job of breaking it up properly (as well as the mulcher)
We don’t have horses around where I live, so I use pig poo. Pig poo is great for the soil, too. I’m no pro in gardening and I’m not landscaper, but I think I’ve been gardening long enough to know my plants are way healthier now in soil with pig poo compared to when they were in ordinary soil.
I am working on my lawn, starting over. I secured a free horse manure source and happy filled my pick up truck with it today.
Some of the poo is dry and some is fresh and mushy. (can’t wait for my dogs to discover horse poo – as someone has already said…..I fear they’ll eat it too)! So…I was hoping to rototil the manure into the deep dirt and then plant grass seed. Some are suggesting just putting the manure ontop of the dirt and seed. Which is best? 
Spreading worm castings or vermi-compost on the lawn is a great way to fertilize. It’s slow-release, organic, and adds tilth to the soil. And it doesn’t smell!