I want to plant jerusalem artichokes in it if it is a good growing medium for them.Would it be better if I cut it 50/50 with peat moss?

What do you mean by "pure", most stables have straw, wood shavings or other bedding added to it. These additions provide the carbon to balance out the nitrogen in the manure.

I have mucked out a neighbors corral, shoveling dried out manure over the block wall between us, directly into a flower bed. I've never seen zinnias grow so well! I'm sure your Jerusalem artichokes would like it just as much.

I grew a lot of squash last year in composted manure that I covered with a little bit of straw from the bedding and they did great. I formed the compost into a mound and placed the seeds on top and covered with straw. The roots obviously went far deeper than the manure but I had no problems at all.

I’m doing this with potatoes. The manure is strawed. I also have the doubt about nitrites and nitrogen being too high or unbalanced for plants. I’m doing it anyway.

I remember seeing this as accepted practice. After the season’s over, you get two products, tubers and well-rotted manure.

I think you have to be able to sense how rotted or fresh it is. I’ve seen fresh manure that didn’t have much straw. I had serious issues about using it, so I just used it for hotbeds. The stuff I have now has much more straw in it and seems at least a little composted down.

I’ve heard horse manure has tons of seeds in it. I’m using the cow stuff.

If you had the time you could run it through a worm composting situation and then you’d be growing in worm castings, not manure. But I imagine you’re anxious to get the sunchokes in the ground.

You know….now that I think about it…why are you bothering? Sunchokes grow just fine in any horrible soil, I wouldn’t think you would need to amend at all.
William

Years ago I had a large garden where I would add old horse manure by the truckload. I grew all sorts of stuff. Never had a problem.

I know I am beating a dead pile of horse manure, but....

check for persistent wormers. It would suck to get all the nitrogen but then kill the biology--makes you no better than big ag.

I guess I'm confused by the question. If it is "well composted," it isn't really horse manure anymore ... or is it? I add horse manure to my compost pile that also includes other thing including hay and chopped brush and some top soil that was scraped up to make the composting site.

So...
Is the question really about compost that contains what was horse manure at one time?
or
Is the question really about using horse manure to directly grow in?

I'd like to know so I don't make any mistakes. For example, R Scott mentioning about the wormers ... I now need to ask my horse-manure-providing neighbor if he gives his horses anything but hay and feed.

Good point R Scott!

Dan, the manure I used was from corrals in the desert of South West Wyoming. Very little hay mixed in. The horses would mix in a lot of soil over time and dust would blow in.
The corrals were cleaned and piled up into large piles nearby. Some of that stuff was decades old!

It is horse manure that I have had in a round wire bin for over a year.It has hay and sand in it also but not much.