Screening Old Poop Into Garden Soil

This is old horse poop, probably around 10 years old. My neighbor has been dumping it over a cliff all that time, and stopped around 5 years ago when he got rid of most of the horses. So it's well-composted, and is now the gardening equivalent of pure gold.

And just like metallic gold, getting it is hard work. I have to haul that cart down a hill, through the woods, over a creek and through a swamp. There's mud, mosquitoes and more Poison Ivy than I care to think about. Digging it out is easy as pie, since it's so light and fluffy? But no matter how light and fluffy it is, a cartload of it still weighs 200 pounds.

So I've got to haul that 200 pounds of garden gold BACK through the swamp, the woods and back UP the hill. I might add video of that later. But once it's in my backyard, I've got to treat it just like gold ore and process it.

The screener is made from scrap lumber I scavenged from a dumpster. The screen is galvanized hardware cloth tacked onto the frame with roofing nails. Build the frame the way you see it in the video, tack on the cloth, then add the last two backing boards and it's done. In the fall, I put the screen up on two saw horses and use it as a drying & curing rack for onions and black walnuts, and other goodies. Everything in my house has more than one use, even if I haven't figured it out just yet.

Eventually, I'll be collecting my OWN manure and composting that to use in my garden. It's a shame to be sending it down the drain? But human waste can contain some really NASTY things, so it has to be composted correctly, or you'll make yourself very sick.

I'll be adding more of this stuff to my BIG garden soon, but it won't get the screen treatment. It'll just get dumped in as is, then tilled into the North Cackalacky clay to make it rich and growy.

This is my kitchen garden, which will have a few tomatoes, cukes, peppers, lettuce, carrots, onions and lots of herbs.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• garden
• organic
• soil
• humus
• manure
• compost
• biodynamic
• terra preta
• brown gold