Grow Your Own Magazine

Hello

At the beginning of spring i manured my veg beds with a load of well rotted chicken manure. However i noticed that this year my potatoes looked really cr@p - really small sickly looking top growth, only 2-3 spuds per plant but massive in size. Some of my bean plants are very yellow looking too but copping ok still.

Anyway, i was telling my dad about this last week & he said it was because chicken manure has too much Amonia in it....or was it Acid...or are they the same thing...?

Anyway, he says Cow or Horse manure is much preferable to chicken manure - what do you guys think? Should i forget the well rotten chicken poop?

(P.S i have no access to cow / horse manure, but a field of 300 chickens opposite my house & a very nice farmer who sells me it for £1 per bag, or i could stick to the pelleted stuff?)!

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Newbie,
keen but clueless

Yes it is high in ammonia and probably a bit strong in large amounts. It's still a very good fertiliser though as it is high in phophorus and nitrogen and is used commercially. I'd still use it but less of it.

Ammonia and acid are not the same thing, opposites actually. Ammonia is alkaline with a high pH and acid is ...well acid that has a low pH.

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Mark

Vegetable Kingdom blog

Chicken manure is like rocket fuel which is why you can get lots of soft growth because you have overfed the nitrogen. If you can only get chicken manure you might be better mixing it with homemade compost and leaving it to rot down. In that sense you are diluting the high nitrogen content of the chicken manure.
You may still have time, if you have the space to grow squash plants as these absorb a lot of nitrogen from the soil....this will help lower the overall nitrogen content.

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Geordie

Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure

Well there you go, that's something else I've learned, I must admit I always thought Ammonia was acidic.........

i.e. using of Sulphate of Ammonia for acidifying soil?

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Well I learnt something too; just looked up ammonium sulphate and it does lower the pH of the soil, but it does so by releasing the sulphate which reacts with the soil to become sulphuric acid whilst at the same time releasing the nitrogen from the ammonia; double whammy.

Ammonium sulphate is a salt resulting form the combination of an alkali (ammonia) and an acid (sulphuric).

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Mark

Vegetable Kingdom blog

Hi Newbie!

I would persevere with the chicken manure if you can get it cheap, but with the following provisos:

1. It's much stronger than cow/horse manure, so you only need a small quantity. Think of it more like a conventional organic fertilizer such as blood, fish & bone, rather than a bulky soil improver like cow/horse manure; both have their uses on the plot.

2. It does need to rot down for quite a while - I put some manure from my own hens on my salad bed last autumn and let it weather over the winter, and have had great crops (more coriander than I could possibly use, and a huge swiss chard!). Putting it on in spring and then planting straight into it will burn your plants, however.

3. If you have more than you need, it can also be added to your compost heap (again in modest quantities), where it will make a good starter and get the heap "cooking".

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Small Plot? No Problem! - my blog about growing organic veg

Great! Thanks guys, i will persevere with the chicken poop then!

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Newbie,
keen but clueless

We always mix it with the homemade compost, it's brilliant stuff, but does need to be well rotted. It's high in ammonia as birds don't do number ones and number twos, but just do the whole lot together, which means you're getting the equivalent of what would be chicken wee mixed in. It's the ammonia which provides all that nitrogen though and can thus lead to sappy growth if it's rotted or scorching if it isn't. Mix it with compost or use it sparingly on its own when thoroughly rotted down and you should get brilliant results. As for buying the pelleted stuff. We used it when we first took on our lottie as we'd no manure or compost ready for the first year, it's very good, but expensive, especially when you can get the raw stuff free/cheap.

How long does it take for manure to be well-rotted? I now have access to as much horse manure as I want. It doesn't have any hay or wood shavings in it. Can I put this straight on to the areas I'm clearing and covering or will it be best to leave for a while?

I would stack it for 6 months. I would also put it (fresh) in layers on the compost heap - so add, say, 6" - 12" of composts garden material then a 2" or 3" layer of manure. The manure will accelerate the composting process.

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K's Garden blog last update 3rd August 2008

Thanks Kristen. I've added some to the compost box and will keep a seperate pile to use. One local riding stable leaves theirs on the side of the field for people to help themselves to but not many seem to. Mind you, my car constantly stinks so maybe that's why lol