Is my garden soil screwed?! HELP!!

This is also posted in the Garden section because I wasn't sure where it should go. I need answers asap

I cleaned out my chicken run today, and when I scraped up the packed down stinky dirt from the ground, I mixed it with fresh topsoil and spread it all over my garden area. I wasn't thinking about whether or not this was the right way to handle that waste filled soil from the run. It contains manure from the whole past year, including fresh stuff. I have 4 girls living (and pooping) in there. We're getting ready to till the garden and plant our seedlings in the next two weeks... is my soil now contaminated or destroyed?! Advice greatly appreciated!

Depends on what you want to plant in there. Your best bet would be to heavily water the area to dilute some of the fresh poo. If not it may be very hot.

We clean out our run every spring just so we CAN till it into our garden. We do the Deep Litter Method in the run so there is broken down straw, hay, grass clippings, leaves, veggies, pine needles and poo. As long as the fresh manure isn't too consentrated, it sholdn't be a problem. Is the manure mixed in with any natural bedding besides the topsoil?

ChickenMammX4 said:

We clean out our run every spring just so we CAN till it into our garden. We do the Deep Litter Method in the run so there is broken down straw, hay, grass clippings, leaves, veggies, pine needles and poo. As long as the fresh manure isn't too consentrated, it sholdn't be a problem. Is the manure mixed in with any natural bedding besides the topsoil?

Click to expand...

That compost looks nice.

The idea of non-composted manure "burning" plants is WAY overblown. It is possible to over-manure the soil (don't plant directly into a pile of manure), but if tilled well, you will be able to grown anything in that soil. The issue comes when you have plants like tomatoes and peppers where large leafy plants are not your main goal (you don't eat the leaves, so you need them to flower and fruit). Even some fruiting plants are notoriously heavy nitrogen feeders (corn, for ex) and if adequately watered, cannot be over fertilized. The other, less likely, issue is that nutrients are always present in the soil in the form of salts (not your table salt), and if sufficiently concentrated, can kill root hairs by desiccation faster than if the salts were less -- so watch for the first sign of wilting and water well if you suspect a high salt concentration of any kind, manure or otherwise.

The soil is not poisoned, the worst case is you will need to water a bit more often and your tomato plants might top 8 ft and not bear as well as they might (pruning will help some with this). Even this is temporary, without adding manure regularly, the nitrogen will be quickly tied up by soil microbes attacking the straw, shavings, or other carbon-based debris. This is what happens in a compost pile and it will happen in your soil in a matter of weeks or months.

In case you get different opinions on this, go ahead and try it and see who's right. I graduated top of my class in Horticulture from the University of MD and I understand the way plants roots grow and absorb nutrition at a biochemical level, so you can trust that I know what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to diss the idea of composting manure, I do it all the time, sometimes using a method called "sheet composting" where I spread the brooder litter around my trees like landscaper use shredded tree bark. It has a nice look and every rain causes some small amounts for nitrogen to leach down to the plants roots and also runoff into the lawn, fertilizing everything it it's path and giving me a very convenient place to dump the waste from the brooders. The trick with sheet composting is to not pile it against soft stems, only bark. It kills any weeds quickly and forms a barrier against weeds growing close to the tree, but just an inch or 2 away the grass is growing better than if it had regular visits from a lawn service.

Hopefully it goes without saying, but do not add any more Nitrogen fertilizer to this plot, for this year and probably the next (if you are raising tomatoes and peppers). If you clean your coop this time of year, I would encourage everyone to pile the bedding someplace out of the way and let it sit for a few months. Whenever you want to give some plant a boost, dig into the oldest bedding and spread it around the surface of the soil, under, but not against the plant stems. Rain will take care of the rest. When it has sat for a year, it will be perfect as a top dressing for the garden, tilled in or left on the surface (or both).