Manure

[J-L]

Hello everyone, been gone a while because of fall work. I have a question for you farmer types.
I’ve got a good sized manure pile that’s been cooking for a year. I want to put it on my oat patch which I’m working up right now and will plant next spring (actually oats, peas, and hay barley). My question is should I spread now and work in with my disks or wait ’til next spring and put it in before I plant?
All advice is appreciated as I’m not too much of a farmer.

[Does’ Leap]

I would tend to wait until spring. Working soil this time of year leaves them more prone to erosion. Also, any amonimum and nitrate (the readily avaialbe nitrogen fraction) in that compost / manure will likely be lost without growing plants to utilize it if you were to spread it this fall.

George

[dominiquer60]

That readily available nitrogen fraction is highly volatile, you can smell it, and if you can smell it that means that you are loosing it to the atmosphere. One approach is to spread the compost and work it in right away to capture the volatile nitrogen in the soil and not the atmosphere. If you do this shortly before working the soil for your oats mix it can help maximize the amount of nitrogen available for that new crop. A soil test can be a valuable tool to help determine how much compost your soil could use. I am sure that there is more than one way to skin this cat. Good Luck.

[Carl Russell]

Depending on how much time you have on your ground in the spring, you may want to spread now, work it in, and plant winter rye to capture those nutrients, then just disc in the rye before planting in the spring. If you have warm dry ground in the spring, then wait till then.

We generally have a short window after mud season, so the more we can do to prepare the soil in the fall, the better. Soil erosion and nutrient leaching are difficult to manage, so a cover crop is what we strive for, then just a couple of passes with the harrows in the spring, and we’re ready to go.

Carl

[J-L]

Thanks for the replies. Spring is a busy time for me with calving and other chores. This ground is at 7100′ elevation and we don’t have much time between last and first frost either.
Sounds like it may be better to do in the spring, but time constraints may force me to put it in this fall. I’ll keep you posted.

[Author]

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