I’ve been boarding my horse at barns for a little while now, and I’ve seen a lot of people composting incorrectly.  Knowing a bit about the process is part of identifying good compost, so here is some information about both.

First of all, manure isn’t fertilizer straight out of the horse’s behind.  The composting process requires time to turn manure and other organic waste into fertilizer and topsoil, and then it still has to go through a compost screen in order to be suitable for landscaping and gardening.  So if you are constantly adding to your compost pile, you are keeping it continually in the composting process, and it will never all finish doing what it needs to do.

Several of my horse care books say that the best thing is to have three manure piles — one at each stage of the composting process.  One pile is almost ready, one is composting, and the third is the one you are currently adding to.  Then, by the time the first pile is ready, you are also finished adding to the third pile; you just get the first pile cleared out, and start a new “current” pile.

Once your first pile is done composting, you need to break up all the large chunks and screen out all the other crap that is too big to make good topsoil.  This is done with topsoil screening machines, which can be rented or purchased, depending on how often you plan on using one.  You should also consider your workload — if you just use it occasionally and need extreme portability, a portable screener would probably be best, but a heavier workload might justify a more heavy duty machine.

If everything is done right, at the end of it all you have a valuable natural fertilizer and topsoil — but if you do it wrong, you just have a big pile of poo!

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