Pine shavings and poop in the garden?

[McGoo]

Hope someone can help with this question ... and not sure what forum it belongs in, if any.

I had my 10 little chicks in a large pen (9x8) w/ a lot of pineshavings for about 5 weeks. I didn't want to toss the pineshavings and so I put them as a ground cover in my vegetable garden. There is some poop in there... but I don't think it's that concentrated. What's your thought? I forgot to mention that the chicks were outside in the daytime in another pen when the weather was good.

Do you think that the pine shavings and poop would be too intense to go directly in the garden? I covered the surface of the garden, but could thin it out a bunch.

What do you think?

 

[ChickenToes]

I think it's supposed to be composted for awhile before you put it in the garden.

 

[MandyH]

I never put it on the garden when it's already planted and growing because it will burn your plants. What I do is throw it on the garden all winter then till it under in spring, let it sit til time to plant, then till it under again and plant. I have some squash plants that are chest high to me!!!!!! That is the BEST fertilizer ever made. In the summer I compost it and use that for my stuff planted in pots and barrels the following Spring.

 

[meriruka]

You probably want to let it sit for a year...
I've been trying, but I can't get the shavings to break down, they just look soggy. Maybe you'll have better luck....

 

[panner123]

Quote:
The correct way to do it as told by Kristen. As for the squash being chest high to her, she forgot to tell us, she is only four feet six inches tall.

Only joking!

 

[Sparrow]

I have a bucket that I keep by the room I am brooding my chicks in(they are still in my house), and when I have to clear waterers of pine shavings, I dump it in the bucket. It gets filled up with water, pine shavings, chicken and duck poop, and feathers. I dump it out afterwards in my yard(I live in the country and do NOT have a manicured yard lol). There is a pumpkin vine growing right next to where I dump the bucket, and this year is the first year I have dumped chicken water on it. It is insanely HUGE this year!! Easily several times the size that it has been in previous years! Obviously it likes the creepy water.

My brother is into growing plants, and I'm going to start giving him some of that water to pour on his sunflowers that he planted outside too. I will see if it makes such a difference with them too.

 

[ozark hen]

since I use the deep litter method, I only clean the coop out twice a year..spring and fall, both times straight to the garden, but then I turn the garden over and it sits for a couple months. Actually, it is late winter when it goes onto the garden...about early March or so. My veggies are huge and a neighbor who uses commercial fertilzers on her garden can't get over how big the veggies are in my garden, and keeps saying, you don't buy fertilzer? I tell her no, just the litter from the coop. She asks every single summer...go figure

 

[ravenfeathers]

Quote:
it takes a minimum of two years for shavings to break down and compost. i've had some that took three years. you can use the stuff to amend your soil after a year. it will look kind of funky, but will continue to break down in your garden.

 

[Buff Hooligans]

Quote:
Gosh darn, I wish someone had told me that last year when I started composting the coop litter ! ! ! I had to go out and buy cow manure in bags this year because my kitchen scrap composter was all messed up by non-decomposed shavings.

 

[Wynette]

I'd posted on another similar thread about this - I used to put all my pine shavings/manure from my horse stalls in my garden, and my veggies got progressively worse. By the 3rd year, the plants would grow, but no veggies. I took a soil samle in to the local university extension service to find out what was going wrong, and they did an extensive analysis (for $10 - quite a deal, I thought!) and gave recommenations. In a nutshell, the pine shavings took it way off the charts for one level - don't recall if it was pH or acidity, but one of them. It took 2 FULL years to get it back on track. So, I don't put any pine shavings in my garden any longer. I sure learned my lesson! Those 2 years we had veggies in big pots all summer, which worked out okay, but we had maybe 1/10 of what we usually have in plants!