No better way to get warm on a cold day that to load manure in to a trailer and then to barrow it to areas of bare soil in the veg and fruit garden. Once the manure is spread, we like to cover the manured bare soil either with old straw or sheets of black plastic. These plastic sheets are removed before planting out seedlings in April or May or later. Meanwhile the sheets of black plastic are weighed down with a few shovelfuls of builders’ sand. This sand can be dug in when the plastic is removed to lighten our loamy soil.
Note the small trailer which gets refilled again and again with horse manure. This is then barrowed to bare soil areas.
The plan is to re-use these sheets of plastic year after year. During summer and autumn, they will be folded and stored away ready for re-use next winter.
