I've never planted a cover crop before so have been researching them quite a bit recently but now I'm confused again (happens easily) :/
My understanding of a cover crop was that you plant it in an empty garden bed after the crop has been harvested, let it grow and till it in after only a few weeks, before it sets seed but Cat, it sounds like you just leave it over the winter and then till it in the spring? When I first read that, I thought you must be in a milder climate than I am but I'm guessing MA is colder than where I am. How does it stand up to being snowed and iced on for several months?
Steve - got it. Annual Rye and not perennial. But even then, you are saying it is hard to kill?
Hosspak
about the unicorn poop. The 8" of coop bedding? That is just since November. Since then we've been too snowed under to clean the coop and add the bedding to the garden but it will be a priority as soon as the weather warms a little. I've broken all the rules when it comes to keeping poultry, as my coop is 10x10 but houses around 100 birds. I get away with it because I have no run - so they have several acres to free-range during the day and only use the coop to sleep, eat and lay their eggs. So in the summer it can take 6 months to build up the bedding that high, but this time of year it builds up much faster. But I would really recommend to you that you consider going a little deeper than 2-3". The idea behind DLM is that the bedding will start to compost in place but that doesn't happen until it gets that bit deeper - 6-8" is optimum. What I do is start with one bale of straw on the concrete floor of the coop, and after only a short time they have pooped enough that it is time to add a second bale. All I have to do is cut the wire of the bale and spread the flakes around the coop - they do the rest in their search for wheat seeds remaining on the stems and within hours, the straw is fluffy and spread evenly throughout the coop - far better than I could have ever done it. After that, each day I sprinkle a little BOSS on top of the bedding. In their effort not to miss a single seed, they turn the bedding over again. Every single day. Once the bedding has absorbed as much poop as it can - i.e., when it reaches "saturation point", I add another bale of straw. And continue with the BOSS. As I said, my layer is now about 8" but when they turn it over and start to scratch below the surface, you can see that the bottom already looks more like dirt than it does chicken poop and straw. The other advantage to the DLM method in a cold climate is that the composting process produces heat so the bedding is not only soft and spongy for them to land on when they jump off the roosts, but it contains a little warmth as well.
What did I do wrong? I did throw in some cracked corn daily.
