Harvesting my Chicken Run Compost - Black Gold!

[Tinypahomestead]

I'm not anti-artificial fertilizer, per se, but I do prefer to use my own organic chicken run compost. Like you, I have tried to live by the motto of feeding the soil and the soil will feed the plants. I think most artificial fertilizers feed the plants and do not help the soil at all.

Also, over the years, I have gone to less and less tilling as I have heard that it disrupts all the good living organisms in the soil that we want to encourage. Having said that, the first few years I attempted gardening here at the lake, I was tilling in as much organic material I could throw on the sandy soil garden. I think you have to have a good healthy base soil before the no till method makes sense.

We just started gardening at our new place. We had to till last fall since we had moved so much dirt for the greenhouse and trying to level the sloped yard. We raked a bazillion rocks out, then topped our beds with spent mushroom compost and then chopped leaves and let it sit all winter. Won't be tilling again, just topping every year with chicken/rabbit run compost. My garden is doing pretty well for its first year and the earthworms are fat and happy. I also sprayed my Jadam Microbial Solution on all the beds a rew weeks ago before a rain. The borage pics below were taken on June 3rd (before JMS) and June 14th (after JMS and rain).

 

[Tinypahomestead]

I'm not so much anti-fertilizer, more cheap and a bit lazy .

 

[rosemarythyme]

Just a quick update for anybody reading this thread, I got my new raised beds completed, filled, and planted. I use 1 part chicken run compost with 1 part high quality top soil for the last 6-8 inches, and already my plants in those beds are about twice as tall as my plants out in my main garden. Looks like I'm off to a really good start this year.

Yeah I inadvertently did a test on my tomatoes... had an extra plant and a big planter that could probably hold a tomato, but no extra bag of dirt (and didn't want to go get one). So I filled the pot with mostly chicken run compost, plus whatever dirt I had sitting in some small unused pots, so about a 3:1 ratio, and that tomato is easily twice as big and fuller than its sibling plant planted my garden bed.

Next year, I gotta make sure to sift out a good amount of chicken run compost to add to the regular compost. Most of my beds just got a top dressing of my regular compost but I didn't have as much to go around this year.

 

[gtaus]

My garden is doing pretty well for its first year and the earthworms are fat and happy.

Looks like a nice garden and sounds like you have a great start. When I started my garden, I had almost nothing but sand. No worms to be found. I spent a few years dumping in grass clippings and leaves on the garden soil throughout the year and tilling it in every spring before planting. After a number of years, my sandy soil started looking much better and I started to see worms when I dug out a shovel full of soil.

About 10 years ago, I decided to go to no till gardening, and then later switched to raised beds and the square foot gardening method. I get better results with that system, but probably because I had built up the soil over the previous years.

I am a terrible gardener, but still, I have managed to learn from my mistakes and successes, and now generally have more success in gardening than in the past. Since I started making my own chicken run compost, I have seen lots of improvements. Although there is some chicken poo in the compost, it's still mostly broken-down leaf mold and grass clippings. The chickens just mix it up when they scratch and peck in the run.

 

[gtaus]

I'm not so much anti-fertilizer, more cheap and a bit lazy .

I really don't know how much it would cost to buy chemical fertilizer these days. I think it would be easier to spray on chemical fertilizers than making my own chicken run compost. But, I enjoy the process of raising composting chickens, making my own compost for the gardens, and getting some eggs as a bonus.

 

[gtaus]

I filled the pot with mostly chicken run compost, plus whatever dirt I had sitting in some small unused pots, so about a 3:1 ratio, and that tomato is easily twice as big and fuller than its sibling plant planted my garden bed.

Yeah, that chicken run compost can be powerful stuff. I initially mixed my top 6-8 inches of my raised beds at a ratio of 1:1 chicken run compost to high quality topsoil. But, from now on, I will only be adding and cultivating chicken run compost into those beds. Although the mix of compost might get a little higher than 1:1, from what I understand, compost breaks down and gets used up whereas the soil does not.

Also, almost all my raised beds use the hügelkultur method, so every year I can expect the wood to decompose a bit and the level of the soil to drop in the raised beds. Just need to top off the beds with fresh compost every year before planting. Although I state that I don't till my gardens, I do use a small cultivator to mix the fresh compost into the existing soil in the raised beds. That mixes up the top maybe 4 inches of the soil. According to what I have read in my Square Foot Gardening material, it says to mix the fresh compost in like that. Works good for me.

 

[Tinypahomestead]

I really don't know how much it would cost to buy chemical fertilizer these days. I think it would be easier to spray on chemical fertilizers than making my own chicken run compost. But, I enjoy the process of raising composting chickens, making my own compost for the gardens, and getting some eggs as a bonus.

I like the idea of having to purchase very few/no inputs at all.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Yeah, I’ll take something made in the backyard out of a waste stream over something made out of petroleum and shipped long distances every time.

 

[Tinypahomestead]

Yeah, I’ll take something made in the backyard out of a waste stream over something made out of petroleum and shipped long distances every time.

Absolutely!

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

So, we have a flower garden in front of the house my wife wants to redo. I've top dressed it with compost and mulch, but never really tilled it.

So, we're slowly starting on an new angle in chicken run composting...I'm digging up the flower bed, plants, old mulch, old compost, nasty clay soil, and all...about 6-8 inches deep...and dumping it in the run.

Then I'll replace it with chicken run compost before we replant and re-mulch.

The "stuff" that came out of the bed...good, bad, and indifferent, are now going to be in the run to "recharge" and some day make their way back out into use somewhere on the property. In the meantime, they'll get scratched up, spread around, mixed with poop and organic materials of many types, and converted into something far better than they are today.