"Trish Brown" wrote in message
0tterbot wrote:
hello,

in retrospect, i am thinking now that it ended up being unfortunate that
we mulched with horse poo, rather than (say) straw, just before a stint
of (unseasonal for the area) hot weather with almost no rain.
knowing that dark colours are likely to absorb heat & lighter colours to
deflect it, i've been putting straw round the veggies over the top of the
poo (but as my plants are pretty well spaced, most of the bed areas are
still pooed, rather than strawed).

when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't
measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is
several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the
larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all
that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's
just blindingly hot :-).
(snip)
I used to mulch with stable manure (mixed liberally with wood-shavings)
and it remains my favourite mulch to this day. Sadly, we no longer keep
horses, so I've had to revert to paddock-pickings (ie pure poo) to bring
home and rot. This feels *much* hotter to me than the shavings mixture.
I'd never discussed it with anyone before, but I think we've hit upon
something here. Would it be worth investing in a bale of sugar cane mulch
to cover the poo thinly and (perhaps?) reduce the temp?

Otterbot has a problem with bloody choughs so I'd recommend rice hulls
rather than sugar cane mulch. Rice hulls are so tiny they seem to have
prolbems chucking it around. One thing I never knew about choughs till I
was told and then actually watched them, is that choughs only use their
beaks for chucking stuff and never use their feet to rake stuff.