HEChicken
Attractive To Bees
Thanks everyone. You pretty much confirmed the way I was leaning which was to remove the cardboard.
Cat - yes! I've been adding organic material ever since the first tilling. Last year I covered the entire plot with the bedding from the DLM (deep litter method) of my chicken coop. Several times. I use straw as the bedding and the bedding layer in a coop housing 100 chickens, turkeys and ducks was about 8" thick so that was quite a bit of bedding. In addition, I keep a compost crock (how elegant that sounds - in reality it is an old coffee can) on my kitchen counter and any compostable materials that the chickens won't eat, go into it. When its full, I take it to the garden, dig 4-5 holes, and bury 20-25% of the container in each hole. Fortunately, earthworms abound here and by giving them plenty to eat, they went forth and multiplied last year. One time I weeded an area where I had clearly previously buried compost. I know because I found a tiny scrap of banana peel with a sticker attached to it (from the store). But that was all I found, indicating the rest of what I had buried with it had already been incorporated.
I have also been researching cover crops for this year. I've never done a cover crop before but I think I've settled on Dutch White Clover. I mentioned to DH the other day that I might need to invest in a smaller tiller so that I can till when I need to without relying on the neighbor's "big tiller". It is a new area for me though so I appreciate the brand recommendation - it gives me a starting point to research.
Journey….I have an abundance of hay I can use as mulch if I run out of coop bedding, but DH was concerned using it was only adding weed seeds. Have you used it successfully in the past? We don't get lawn clippings here because our own mowers mulch and I've been reluctant to contact lawn services because there's no telling what chemicals have been used on the grass they are cutting. I would LOVE to get my hands on leaves but….we live in a rural area and people here don't rake their leaves and bag them like they do in the city. I probably need to go trolling nearby towns in the fall, looking for bags of leaves that people have put out at the curb
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Lavender, that is a good point about watering. Right now it is damp under the cardboard but I imagine when it dries out, that will change, and getting water to the garden might prove difficult. Another great reason to remove the cardboard!
Cat - yes! I've been adding organic material ever since the first tilling. Last year I covered the entire plot with the bedding from the DLM (deep litter method) of my chicken coop. Several times. I use straw as the bedding and the bedding layer in a coop housing 100 chickens, turkeys and ducks was about 8" thick so that was quite a bit of bedding. In addition, I keep a compost crock (how elegant that sounds - in reality it is an old coffee can) on my kitchen counter and any compostable materials that the chickens won't eat, go into it. When its full, I take it to the garden, dig 4-5 holes, and bury 20-25% of the container in each hole. Fortunately, earthworms abound here and by giving them plenty to eat, they went forth and multiplied last year. One time I weeded an area where I had clearly previously buried compost. I know because I found a tiny scrap of banana peel with a sticker attached to it (from the store). But that was all I found, indicating the rest of what I had buried with it had already been incorporated.
I have also been researching cover crops for this year. I've never done a cover crop before but I think I've settled on Dutch White Clover. I mentioned to DH the other day that I might need to invest in a smaller tiller so that I can till when I need to without relying on the neighbor's "big tiller". It is a new area for me though so I appreciate the brand recommendation - it gives me a starting point to research.
Journey….I have an abundance of hay I can use as mulch if I run out of coop bedding, but DH was concerned using it was only adding weed seeds. Have you used it successfully in the past? We don't get lawn clippings here because our own mowers mulch and I've been reluctant to contact lawn services because there's no telling what chemicals have been used on the grass they are cutting. I would LOVE to get my hands on leaves but….we live in a rural area and people here don't rake their leaves and bag them like they do in the city. I probably need to go trolling nearby towns in the fall, looking for bags of leaves that people have put out at the curb
. Lavender, that is a good point about watering. Right now it is damp under the cardboard but I imagine when it dries out, that will change, and getting water to the garden might prove difficult. Another great reason to remove the cardboard!
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.
