Experiment: Red Dirt & Chicken Poo Tea

[ducks4you]

ALSO, if you live in the Midwest do NOT put down sand! I put down a 70 pound bag on sand in my horse's training area and now need to dig it up. When it dries out it turns rock hard and my horses can slip on it.
I think you did the right thing. Continue to make manure tea:
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/manures/manure-tea.htm

 

[baymule]

We have PILES and PILES of wood chips. We are going to utilize them to improve our sandy soil. The manure tea sure is helping too.

 

[bobm]

Bay , I would consider in becoming best friends with a owner of a horse facility so that you could haul off their road apples. I spread the road apples plus bedding straight out of the barn ( no composting needed ) out daily onto the pastures about 6" thick year round. The difference in grass growth is 7" tall grass on native land and 25" tall on the manured side.

 

[baymule]

@bobm there is a horse show facility 10 miles from us and we can have all we want. We hauled many, many loads of it. Problem is, it is more pine shavings than poop. They didn't break down too well and being small shavings, they had a tendency to pack. There is a patch of them in the "pasture" where the pigs are now and if I dig down, the dirt is black, but there is 8" of pine shavings on top and it's been a year and a half. The pigs are mixing it up.

We have 3 horses and we filled a few low spots in the other front pasture with horse manure. The barn is now paved with wood chips and we will dig it out and apply fresh wood chips. We have 2 large piles of cow manure and hay, 1 large pile of horse manure, composting.

 

[Nyboy]

I keep the inside section of Harvey's hutch fill with pine shaving all winter. I assumed pine shaving would break down quickly and dumped them with manure. They did not break down and made a cement like mess.Lesson learned only fecal material added to pile.

 

[Nyboy]

When ever I hear about red clay I think of this scene from My Cousin Vinny. PS I looked the same Sunday when I fell in mud

 

[bobm]

When ever I hear about red clay I think of this scene from My Cousin Vinny. PS I looked the same Sunday when I fell in mud

No wonder Vinnie is pissed off ... he is wearing designer shirt and jeans.

 

[lcertuche]

I got me some red clay so I guess iron is something I needn't worry about. I never really heard of people needing iron here. For many, many years people have limed their garden though and if you don't add some kind of calcium you'll get tomato blossom end rot by the end of season. In our heavy soils I add a lot of leaves and chicken litter from the coop. Things grow pretty good. Boy I need to get my garden planted...

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm trying to get mine out this week also. I'm not in horrible shape but it's a challenge.

If you have clay you probably have plenty of calcium in your soil. Talk to your extension agent about getting a soils analysis, it's free in Washington County, probably is for you too. Our native rock is limestone, which eventually breaks down into clay. That has a lot of calcium in it. If you use chicken poop to make compost, a lot of the calcium the hens eat is not absorbed into their body but goes on out the rear end. Compost from chicken manure is usually pretty high in calcium.

Blossom End Rot is caused by calcium not getting to the flower and fruit. That's usually nit because calcium is not in the soil, it's because the ground is too dry to provide enough water to carry it. Mulching can help keep the soil moist and is probably the best preventative for BER.

The reason to lime a garden is to get the pH right. Again, a soils analysis can tell you what the pH is and whether or not you should add lime and they'll even recommend how much. I sometimes have to add lime too to adjust that pH. But I only do that after a free soils analysis. Otherwise I may be doing more harm than good.

 

[seedcorn]

pH is probably the most important thing that affects plant uptake. Along with water.

It is hard to add too much lime unless you have basic soils. In Indiana, we are acidic.