ventured out to check vegetable garden today .......I'm in michigan and
this is first day this year temp has risen above 50°
i covered carrots with a large amount of straw last fall.... could only
find a handful of about 10 or 12 pounds that i was expecting to find. looks
like the mice?? got most of them.


tilled mucho horse manure into soil last fall and covered with wheat
straw..........lots of wheat berries in the straw and it grew few inches
before it got real cold......i read that wheat was an annual and that the
wheat would die off by spring........but that did not happen......


soil is still wet, thought not soggy.....is it ok to plant peas and
lettuce? TIA.............

On Mon, 31 Mar 2014 21:10:43 GMT, wrote:

ventured out to check vegetable garden today .......I'm in michigan and
this is first day this year temp has risen above 50°
i covered carrots with a large amount of straw last fall.... could only
find a handful of about 10 or 12 pounds that i was expecting to find. looks
like the mice?? got most of them.

Was a very cold winter, critters ate whatever they could find. Here
in The northern Catskills I've learned not to plant much in the fall
to over winter, just onions and garlic... critters don't eat alliums.
I don't plant carrots, they're a pain to grow and caqrrots are
inexpensive when purchased in bulk.. I feed carrots to the deer so I
buy 25 lb sacks for about $15.

tilled mucho horse manure into soil last fall and covered with wheat
straw..........lots of wheat berries in the straw and it grew few inches
before it got real cold......i read that wheat was an annual and that the
wheat would die off by spring........but that did not happen......

Find another source for straw, it shouldn't contain seeds... but horse
manure always contains lots of seeds don't use it unless it's been hot
composted to kill the seeds.

soil is still wet, thought not soggy.....is it ok to plant peas and
lettuce? TIA.............

Now is probably a good time to plant cool weather crops, like peas,
anything in the cabbage family, beets/chard, lettuce, turnips,
spinach, etc.

wrote:
....
tilled mucho horse manure into soil last fall and covered with wheat
straw..........lots of wheat berries in the straw and it grew few inches
before it got real cold......i read that wheat was an annual and that the
wheat would die off by spring........but that did not happen......

yes, wheat is an annual, but it tolerates quite
a bit of cold with a good snow cover and we certainly
had that this year.

winter wheat is a common crop here in michigan,
i'm not sure where you heard that from? i planted
both winter rye and winter wheat last fall as ground
cover crops and green manure for later this spring
(when i can actually do something and turn it under).
both of them have done fine. even some of the last
planted seeds that went in right before the ground
froze seem to have sprouted under the snow and are
now growing when we get some sunshine.

oats won't make it through a winter.

i too went out yesterday and today to check a few
things out. a few flowers are starting to poke up.
at last. been a long cold winter.


soil is still wet, thought not soggy.....is it ok to plant peas and
lettuce? TIA.............

good luck if you do, i'll probably wait a few weeks
yet, the ground is frozen in most places here and the
weather is still looking to be too cold overnight.


songbird

Brooklyn1 wrote:


but horse
manure always contains lots of seeds don't use it unless it's been hot
composted to kill the seeds.

No, you are over generalising. It depends on what the horses have been
eating. There are plenty of situations where horses on either hard feed or
pasture do not eat viable seeds. If you don't know then test some first and
if it sprouts then hot compost it. There are other reasons why you might
want to know the provenance of your manure as well, such as the possibility
of contamination.

David

David Hare-Scott wrote:
....
No, you are over generalising. It depends on what the horses have been
eating. There are plenty of situations where horses on either hard feed or
pasture do not eat viable seeds. If you don't know then test some first and
if it sprouts then hot compost it. There are other reasons why you might
want to know the provenance of your manure as well, such as the possibility
of contamination.

from my reading of the OPs post i'm thinking they
knew it had seeds in it but was just mistaken that
seeds/sprouts would survive the winter.


songbird