"Ed" ex@directory wrote in message
o.uk...
I have a couple of large compost bins on my allotment which I regularly
fill with compostable materials from home, but this only accounts for a few
percent.

For the most part, I go to the local riding stables where they bag up the
horse manure and leave it outside for people to take for free.

In the winter time, when the horses are inside the stables, the mix is
heavy with straw and bedding. But now in the warmer months with the
horses outside , it is mainly stuff gathered straight off the paddock
areas where the horses pass their days.

The thing is this. The bins are 4'x3'x3' and I just do not have the
energy or strength to turn them. So , in effect they are cold compost
heaps. I let the contents rot down over a 2 year period.

But is there a danger that the pathogens in the horse dung will not die
off (as they would if I were operating a hot heap) and that my family
could become seriously ill if I use this composted material on my
vegetable plot even if it is 2 years old?


Don't know anything about this hot or cold compost business. We don't even
have a bin, just a compost heap at the back of our garden (it's sort of
contained by two sides of a rotting fence and a neighbour's stone outhouse)
and have been 'mining' this from the bottom for the last 25 years. We dig
it out from the bottom, then riddle it through a garden sieve, and use it on
our garden and allotments. Everything organic, such as meat and veg bits
from the kitchen goes into it, as well as dead bodies of rats and mice our
cats catch, and feathers of pheasants we find on the road and prepare for
the table, and poo and stuff we find in the garden. Also any other
unpleasant thing, like food that has gone off. We cover the top of the heap
with grass cuttings when we mow the lawn, and just keep piling the stuff on.
It seems to take about 3 years for the stuff at the top to de-percolate down
to the bottom. We collect horse manure and pile it in heaps nearby and when
it rots down enough we shovel it onto the garden and allotments.

I haven't heard of anyone getting sick from using home-made compost.

WARNING: over the last year or so, horse manure is to be avoided, because
apparently horse owners and farmers are using a new toxic weedkiller which
the horses ingest in the field when grazing, and it passes through their gut
and if you use the manure, it will kill your plants off. I understand that
this will be discussed on Friday in Gardener's Question Time, BBC4,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006...sodes/upcoming

someone