Our well-rotted horse manure compost is a nutrient-rich, dark and crumbly organic soil improver made from fully composted stable litter. It naturally adds essential nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium while boosting organic matter, improving soil structure and encouraging healthy worm activity. Perfect for:
This low-odour compost acts as an excellent natural mulch that helps retain moisture, suppress weeds and promote strong plant growth without the need for chemical fertilisers. Ideal for renovating your outdoor space into a thriving, low-maintenance garden.
Price range: £117.00 through £242.00 inc. VAT
Tap a job to fill the depth in. For a raised bed, use the depth of the bed, usually 200 to 300mm.
Key Benefits
Please Note: This product is not ideal or recommended for potting or seeding. Results may vary. We would recommend our Multipurpose Compost or John Innes for these applications.
| Quantity | Builders Bag (approx. 600L), Bulk Bag (approx. 1000L), XL Bag (approx. 1200L), 30 x 50L Bags, 60 x 50L Bags |
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Specifications, Inspirational Ideas & DIY Guides
Why Professionals & Homeowners Choose, Applications, DIY Guides & Inspirational Ideas, Maintenance, Purchasing Tips, FAQs, Related Products
Well-rotted horse manure compost is what that heap becomes after six to twelve months of stacking, done for you. Ours is fully composted stable litter, the dung and the straw or shavings bedding together, broken down to a dark brown crumb with very little smell left. It suits anyone feeding hungry ground: vegetable beds, roses, fruit and tired clay. It is not a potting compost and not an acid product, and I say where it does not belong below.
I recommend it where the soil needs feeding and opening up at once.
I pair it with the plants that eat: roses (Rosa), runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus), courgettes and pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo and C. maxima), potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), brassicas (Brassica oleracea), dahlias (Dahlia) and established apple and pear trees (Malus domestica, Pyrus communis). It is not suited to carrots and parsnips, which fork on freshly manured ground, to onions and garlic, which want little feeding, to acid lovers, or to waterlogged ground, where added organic matter turns sour instead of rotting.
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A manure mulch does not stay put like bark: worms take a 5cm layer down within a season, and that’s the point. Top up once a year at 5cm in late winter, and skip a year if the bed is already dark and crumbly to a spade's depth. Never lime the same bed in the same season, because lime and manure react and the nitrogen leaves as ammonia. If you manure every year, test the pH every couple of years, since composted manure nudges soil towards alkaline and a bed that started at 6 can drift past 7. Hoe off the odd spring seedling while it is small.
Buy for a 5cm mulch and you will not run short. A bulk bag of around 1,000 litres covers roughly 20 square metres at 5cm or 12 at 8cm. Each 50 litre bag covers one square metre, so the 30 and 60 bag packs suit a few raised beds rather than a plot. Expect a 1,000 litre bag to weigh in the region of 550 to 600kg. Stable litter varies by yard, so colour and texture shift between batches, shavings-based litter looking paler and finer than straw-based.
If the bed is heavy clay, or it is going under brassicas, our Mushroom Compost does the structure job better and its chalk helps hold off club root, so I would pick that one and save manure for beds that want feeding.
If you would rather talk your horse manure compost order through with a person, ring Outdoor Aggregates on 0330 043 7585. The office is open 7am to 7pm, seven days a week.
Horse manure compost is stable litter, the droppings and the straw or shavings bedding together, rotted for six to twelve months until dark, crumbly and nearly odourless. Much of the nutrient value is in the urine-soaked bedding, which is why it stays in.
Well rotted horse manure is one of the best soil improvers for a vegetable bed, and I dig it in where brassicas, potatoes, beans and squash are going. Root crops and onions go into that bed the year after.
A 1,000 litre bulk bag of horse manure compost covers about 20 square metres as a 5cm mulch, and each 50 litre bag covers one square metre at the same depth.
Horse manure compost is too rich and too coarse for seed trays and pots, and the nitrogen that suits a rose bed is toxic to a seedling. Sow into our Multi Purpose Compost, pot on into John Innes No.3, and keep the manure for the beds.
Horse manure compost that has been composted properly has been through the 60 to 70°C that kills weed seed, though I still hoe off the odd seedling. Weedkiller is a separate question: a grassland herbicide called aminopyralid can pass through a horse, survive composting and cripple potatoes, tomatoes, beans and peas. Before a veg bed, sow a few broad beans in a pot of it mixed half and half with clean compost; curled, cupped leaves at three weeks mean send it back.
Horse manure compost is not acidic: composted manure sits at neutral or slightly alkaline, and repeated use pushes soil pH up. Rhododendrons, camellias and blueberries want pH 4 to 5.5, so give them our Ericaceous Compost.
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