It is to my survival. 😁

20+ years ago, a gardening friend on the gardenweb led me to this horse stable in a Chicago suburb.

It has been my best source of composted manure ever since. Every spring and fall whenever there is a lull in the garden, I would take a 50-mile round trip and load up my little Toyota Prius:
1st trip this year:

4th trip this year:


After some trials and errors, I discovered that 5-gallon buckets work best for me; they are the easiest to handle: filling, loading and unloading. Would you believe that the little Prius can hold 26 5-gallon buckets of manure?


There is a horse stable merely 8 miles from my house, but the manure piles are in the middle of the county forest preserve where weed seeds are abundant. So I would rather drive 50 miles for my yearly dose of manure and mulch.

Another byproduct from the stable is twine made of natural fiber that I usually find in the dumpster next to the manure piles. Now I have enough twine to use in the garden to last me a lifetime.



What else would make a gardener happy?

You're one lucky gardener to have such a fine source of manure. In my town (Seattle), what we have is nasty "compost" made
by a commercial firm from whatever junk negligent Seattle citizens happen to throw into their yard waste/"compostable" bins.
It's full of itty-bitty pieces of plastic and foil, and Lord-knows-what-else. Stinky, moldy stuff full of fungus gnats it was last year.
The City actually pays the firm a pretty penny to take it off their hands, and then the firm charges an additional outrageous fee
to end consumers.

I agree. For years I have been looking for a cow manure but haven't found in retail stores yet. In tropical countries atleast cow manure and worm castings is considered as one of the best organic compost for all the plants.

kreemoweet said:.....In my town (Seattle), what we have is nasty "compost" made
by a commercial firm from whatever junk negligent Seattle citizens happen to throw into their yard waste/"compostable" bins. It's full of itty-bitty pieces of plastic and foil, and Lord-knows-what-else. Stinky, moldy stuff full of fungus gnats it was last year.
The City actually pays the firm a pretty penny to take it off their hands, and then the firm charges an additional outrageous fee
to end consumers.

NewbieGardner said:I agree. For years I have been looking for a cow manure but haven't found in retail stores yet.......

Thank you.
I feel for you, kreemoweet & NewbieGardner Compost of your own is never enough, isn't it?

Isn't there any stable or farm within driving distance? Or a zoo? I used to contemplate contacting the zoo before finding the horse stable mentioned above. Is there mounted police in Seattle?

Long ago, while working in downtown Chicago, I would scoop up horse poop from the Chicago Mounted Police horse trailer that was parked in front of my office building and lug it on the train home. Other train commuters gave me a wide berth.

Finally, the police took pity on me and directed me to the police horse barn where I could get as much manure as I could possibly carry off. I learned afterwards to my regret that fresh manure was full of weed seeds. I still have curly dock popping up in my garden to these days.

What wouldn't we do for our garden?

I am back to using horse manure after many years of goat manure .
I am down to one old goat and she does not produce enough for my garden . Lucky my old horse pile is still available, but at 5 years old I am not sure of its potency.
If you can find a source for goat or llama or another ruminant it is far less likely to give you weed seeds.

gardengus said:I am back to using horse manure after many years of goat manure .
I am down to one old goat and she does not produce enough for my garden . Lucky my old horse pile is still available, but at 5 years old I am not sure of its potency.
If you can find a source for goat or llama or another ruminant it is far less likely to give you weed seeds.

Lucky you. How I long for my very own manure source like yours. I think the 5 year old horse manure will still be useful in the garden. I bet earthworms would have been having a field day in that pile.

I have been dreaming of raising goats and chicken. A couple households in my neighborhood keep chicken in their backyard. There are also two beekeepers nearby. However, my husband and I are traveling a large part of the year, so raising any animals is out of question right now.

I have not found any weeds in the horse manure I am getting from the current stable since I go for the aged part of the pile where high temperature would have killed any seeds therein.

Pitimpinai, when in Colorado (93-15) used neighbors stable sweepings. After digging out a slight hill, built a 3' high stacked block retaining wall, 40' long, atop of the dig out. Filled the space, often 1-1.5 ' wide x 3' high, from neighbors pile of stable sweepings--some fresh & some aged. Following yr had nothing but worm castings. Never saw any weeds for next 2 yrs, I then moved. Only problem was that I did not put a plastic tarp between retaining and the worm castings leaked from between the stacked block into the plant bed below.