On Sunday, after I trimmed the grasses, I got around to doing a little gardening. I’m behind on my timeline for my fall garden, but better late than never! I’ve been excited to prep the soil with some of my precious chicken manure, thanks to the Snowflakes. I’ve had a few bins in the corner of the garden, aging for months, in preparation for fall planting. I sifted the compost which came through in a beautiful dusting on the planter beds, making it a snap to mix into the soil.
Since the chicken manure was raked from the coop, there was a lot of gravel mixed in. The sifting separated it out and this detritus is what was left.
I planted a couple six-packs of kale for color in the raised bed by my front walk, using a little artistic license by creating a pyramid shape.
The rain started falling about 15 hours later and the plants got a good, fresh soaking, hopefully setting the chicken manure into action.
Grow, grow, grow!
The Snowflakes are doing great in the front yard despite the fact that I’m a clueless city girl. I’m learning more and more which means more and more questions but mostly I’ve been operating under the premise that Ignorance is Bliss.
I bought another composter last month to handle all the chicken coop poop. 1. Chicken poop definitely piles up. 2. Chicken poop is stinky. 3. Chicken poop is stinkier when it’s been in the pile for a while. 4. Chicken poop makes a compost pile really “hot.”
Whaaaaaaaat?!
This is where the ignorance part comes in. I was stirring the compost pile around and realized that the pile was REALLY hot in the middle. And I mean REALLLLLY hot. Then I started to worry. How hot is too hot? Could a fire start spontaneously? There goes my bliss!
After Googling ‘Compost Fire’ and reading about spontaneous combustion, I decided that I needed to deal with the compost pile out there with the girls. I emptied out the compost bin and found a pile of ash from the middle! No wonder the pile was hot – it had been smoldering in there! Oooopsie!
I filled up five recycle tubs that I placed together in a square. Once I filled them up I moved the chicken cage over on top of them so they can age for a while. I read that it takes about 90 days to mellow out the chicken manure and kill the bacteria so I’ll just leave those piles alone until at least July 1st. Hopefully, smaller piles translates into less combustible.
The girls seem to be thriving despite me!
All's well that ends well....
Tagged as:
chicken manure,
chicken poop,
Composting,
urban chickens
I was wandering around in the yard today, checking on my seedlings, and realized we’re heading into the quiet time of the year in the garden. I’ve got garden greens growing, but the garden doesn’t look very vibrant right now. That’s not a bad thing, just an observation. I found myself clipping away at rangy plants, raking or picking up fallen leaves, throwing away tired plants, and generally just cleaning up. I did get to eat five perfect blueberries off of one of my bushes and found a strawberry hiding, so I snacked a little, too!
This weekend I need to rake out from under my roses and gardenias and replace with the worm castings I ordered. My blueberries probably need a dose of an acid fertilizer and I’ll layer some worm castings over them, too. I’ll spread the worm castings around on most everything. A general clean-up out in the yard will spruce things up and the worm castings will add a nice layer of mulch to protect and feed.
Worm Castings - Pure Gold!
Tagged as:
mulching,
worm castings
