Coop run/dirt maintenance?

[NOLA farm]

The first year or two I would remove my run dirt and mix with plain soil for vegetable gardening. I would then put new generic soil in the run. I am starting to prepare for my vegetable garden now and am digging out the old and filling in with dirt from the run. I couldn't help but to think that last year our garden was pitiful. We had more chickens than years before. Nothing else changed. Is it possible that the dirt in a run becomes useless? If I am adding new and taking out "used/soiled" each year does that help things out? Seems to be very little information I can find other than doing a soil test and amend accordingly. Am I on to doing it right or is time telling me what I am doing is not enough? We throw all sorts of kitchen scraps and coffee grounds into the coop as well as their shells and weeds from other gardens and occasional grass clippings. Then we let the chickens do the rest. I may turn the soil twice a year and have added pine straw and cypress mulch here and there but it takes so long to break down. Banana plant clings have also been added.

What else should I be doing? Should I test the soil? I blamed the heat/drought on the horrible crop last year but now I am in the second guessing phase...

 

[CluckNDoodle]

I do this too!!! Chickens are gold for the garden! It's hard to say what happened, since I don't know exactly what your garden went through last year, it could literally have been anything! For the sake of discussing chicken manure in the garden I'll say this, you can put too much nitrogen in your garden, in turn burning your plants. Chicken poo is considered a hot manure meaning it should be composted before adding to the garden. BUT I add fresh manure mixed with pine shavings to the top of my garden bed all the time and I don't have any issues. The carbon in the pine shavings offsets the hot manure and because I only put it on top of the soil and don't mix it in, it acts more like a slow release fertilizer....this is the second poop thread I've taken part in today and I'm starting to feel like I spend too much time looking at chicken poo.

 

[NOLA farm]

Right. So I am one of those " I do not believe in watering" gardeners. As little as possible while they root in their new homes then cut them off. Over crowd planting style. Last year our summer was incredibly hot and hardly a drop of rain until end of June early July. I watered maybe two times after seeing pulling off my standard was getting impossible. I got one set of tomatoes, mostly green and that was all. I did an unusual amount of pruning as I was using stakes instead of cages and the plants just seemed stressed the whole time. Fairly sure it was my choice and mother nature that messed it all up and nothing at all to do with the chickens. But seriously, the year before I must have set a record with 22 plants! By my estimate well over 250 pounds as I tried to recall how many full grocery bags I gave away and how many containers of marinara I had stored in the freezer. Then straight to ZERO!

So I am going to try mulch this year and go back to cages. Do you add bland soil to your dirt from your run? Are there any ratios of straight from the run soil to balance it for gardens?

Thanks again

 

[CluckNDoodle]

Right. So I am one of those " I do not believe in watering" gardeners. As little as possible while they root in their new homes then cut them off. Over crowd planting style. Last year our summer was incredibly hot and hardly a drop of rain until end of June early July. I watered maybe two times after seeing pulling off my standard was getting impossible. I got one set of tomatoes, mostly green and that was all. I did an unusual amount of pruning as I was using stakes instead of cages and the plants just seemed stressed the whole time. Fairly sure it was my choice and mother nature that messed it all up and nothing at all to do with the chickens. But seriously, the year before I must have set a record with 22 plants! By my estimate well over 250 pounds as I tried to recall how many full grocery bags I gave away and how many containers of marinara I had stored in the freezer. Then straight to ZERO!

So I am going to try mulch this year and go back to cages. Do you add bland soil to your dirt from your run? Are there any ratios of straight from the run soil to balance it for gardens?

Thanks again

So, I believe in watering my garden...but, it's so sweltering hot here in the summer that my garden often gets neglected and only the strongest survive. So not too entirely different from your strategy!
I don't really have a ratio of manure/dirt to garden. I just eyeball it, so I'm really not very helpful. Mulch is definitely the primary thing that saves my garden from my lack of watering though!

 

[aart]

I am starting to prepare for my vegetable garden now and am digging out the old and filling in with dirt from the run.

You're digging out the 'old' garden soil?

The carbon in the pine shavings offsets the hot manure and because I only put it on top of the soil and don't mix it in, it acts more like a slow release fertilizer

Key point there!
Mixing shavings into the soil can steal the nitrogen.

 

[imnukensc]

Right. So I am one of those " I do not believe in watering" gardeners.

Your garden did terrible due to lack of water. Tomatoes (as well as other like squash, cucumbers, melons of all types) require lots of water.

 

[Mtnboomer]

You're digging out the 'old' garden soil?


Key point there!
Mixing shavings into the soil can steal the nitrogen.

Yep! Its not really stolen just held where your garden plants cant use it. As the wood shavings break down it will be released later. I till my coop litter (wood shavings & straw) into the garden soil too but only litter between october and November to avoid too much and then i add fertilizer in the spring. All other litter gets composted. We have rock hard clay so the wood shavings help open up root paths for garden plants