Potatoes and Chickens

[Bean Counter]

Some folks think that you dig potatoes our of gravy, and that chicken is something you buy at the grocery store, ready to cook....

[Bean Counter]

I will cross-post this to the weekly gardening thread, but I want to be able to update it later with actual yields.

I'm into my second year of raising chickens for eggs, but we always try and use everything that they produce...

I use straw to keep my chicken yard dry and usually go through a couple of bales over the winter. Half of the manure chickens produce is during the night and is caught on a "poop board" and kept in a tight metal trash can until enough is accumulated to properly compost it.

The other half of what they poop is in the chicken yard. I put down a reasonable amount of clean straw as often as needed to keep the mud to a minimum. Every few weeks I have to move the dirty straw out and replace it with new, but what to do with the old?

Chicken manure us very "hot", because instead of urinating, the birds excrete uric acid, the white stuff on bird poop, and as it oxidizes it burns off as ammonia. You have to compost chicken manure or it will dissolve the roots of your plants.

What to do??



From the right you can see a cheery tree with a timber bed built around it, my chicken yard with the coop in the background, and on the left, my on ground compost area. When I clean the chicken yard, I rake all of the straw and manure up, and move it to the are against the fence. I have installed a PT 2x12 against the fence to keep material off the fence.

Daily I toss some chicken scratch down on the compost area and our 6 girls spend many happy days scratching, searching for the many worms that are there, while turning and shredding the straw.



That picture was from this evening, after I removed 2 large wheelbarrows full of finished compost, and you can see that the girls are all over it already. I need to clean the chicken yard this week and will be starting a new cycle of composting with the latest batch of dirty straw and manure.

I also add all of the grass clippings when I mow the lawn, and when I weed the beds I feed all of the weeds to the girls. They love the greens and it keeps them very healthy.

But what to do with that compost??

Here are a series of pictures to show you what I do with all of that compost...

This is what my potato bed looked like over a month ago. Note the level of the timbers enclosing the bed.


The secret to raising good potatoes is to hill them as they grow. You pinch off the leaves, and mulch up to the main stem as many times as you can. The plant then puts out runners into the side layers, and produces even more potatoes. The higher you can compost them, the more potatoes they will produce.

I've heard of people using old tires; lay the first one on the ground, fill it with compost and plant your potatoes. As they grow, add another tire, pinch the plants back and compost them up to the main stem again. Keep adding tires and compost until the frost comes. When the leaves turn yellow, start removing tires and compost....

I have added additional timbers in front of the bed, by drilling holes through all the layers and using metal spikes to hold them in place. They retain the compost, and when harvest time comes it will be easy to remove them.

In the back I have used boards held by PVC pipes to retain the back edge of the compost mound.

In the middle of the bed I have Hostas (their last year in this spot) as well as other varieties of potatoes that are not as early as the front variety is. I used some old cedar fence boards and short lengths of PVC to hold them in place, so I could hill up the compost even higher. The higher you mound it, the more potatoes the plants will produce.









I may end up adding yet another cedar board, and possibly another temporary layer of timbers on the front edge. At harvest time, I figure to remove each timber from the front one at a time, catch all of that wonderful compost for recycling to another bed, and really simplify the harvesting of all those potatoes.

The big bed along the front contains Austrian Yellow Fingerlings, and Red German Fingerlings. The back of the bed closest to the coop contains Russets, and German Butterballs (a yellow waxy potato).

Potatoes are very heavy feeders, and even in the absence of warm weather this year, seem to benefit from the composted chicken straw a great deal. That entire mass of loose fluffy composted straw should be filled with a great number of excellent potatoes, and as we harvest them I will update this thread to show how well we did.

To conclude this, I have always considered composting to be a Fall activity when I could gather sufficient leaves and let them rot well enough in advance to feed my Spring garden.

Since deciding to raise chickens for eggs, I have found a new appreciation for compost, and lots of it, and realized in the process that one can easily make outstanding compost all year long if one has access to the right materials...

Cheers!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Nicely done! I keep a separate pile in the tree line for my chicken compost. I let it cook down for 2 years before I use it. It’s powerful stuff!

I’m growing potatoes in grow bags this season; same concept as your raised garden bed...keep adding more dirt/compost as the potato plants grow. Then, tip the whole thing over at the end of the season and you have taters. It’s a freakin’ miracle; I love it! :)

[bigheadfred]

Do you get much scab on your potatoes?

[bigheadfred]

The reason I’m asking is that potato scab, while common, can happen more in the presence of more organic material, like straw. And different varieties of spuds are more, or less, susceptible. So I’m just curious.

[rightly_dividing]

Forgive me if I am wrong, but didn’t you do the tire ring potatos a few years ago?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I did. I still sometimes do. (But you didn’t hear it from me...)

I’m trying the grow bags for the second season just to test them out and see how they hold up - and for how long (2 seasons? 3? 4?) so I can better sell the product to my customers.

Growing Red Norland taters this season - and a few unidentifiable oddballs I found on the floor at work. I waste nothing. :)

[familyop]

I wish that I could build that kind of chicken coop, but it’s too cold up here for too many months and too far from electric company hookups (for heat lamps). So it’ll be larger, insulated, and on a concrete slab with PEX running through it for the solar radiant heating system. ...expensive, eh? But maybe worth it in the near future.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Pictures of my farm & garden, chickens and dogs, etc. :)

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.100778903271032.1705.100000167687175&l=4e9dc84d8f

[Semper Mark]

You’ve got it goin’ on there, bro!

Nicely done.

[US_MilitaryRules]

I would have the mods pull that post. Your name appears and so does your friends.

[CornBred]

Your pictures are so beautiful !! I’m impressed with the amount of work you put in.

I have never eaten a “fresh” chicken in my life. My husband says I don’t know what I’m missing.

A few months ago, a co worker gave him a basket of fresh eggs. Little bitty things. He surprised me with breakfast one morning. I must be too citified because the smell about knocked me out. I tried to eat some but I couldn’t get past the smell. He on the other hand ate like a pig. LOL.

You really did a fantastic job.

[Nam Vet]

Looks great Beanie! Where did you get your plans? I just picked up 6 Rhode Island Red day old chicks last week, so must build a coop later this summer. Right now they are toasting, eating and crapping, er creating 'manure' in a box in the garage. I can notice them growing already, it seems!

Nam Vet

[Kirkwood]

Sounds really tough growing potatoes under trees. The tree roots suck up water and get in the way when you try to dig. Plus you don’t get enough sun. Hope you get something.

[CornBred]

How rude of me. I like what you’ve done too. I wish I had some planting and growing skills. I can’t even grow tomatoes here.

Your place is so neat and orderly.

Very nice.

[pandoraou812]

I just bought my small farm, mainly because I rescue horses. The old owners left their chickens behind. I had allowed them to roam free then one of my dogs wanted to play with her so I have them back in the pen. I use shavings inside the coop but nothing on the ground outside. Should I be using the old hay or put some straw down on the ground for them?

I also have 3 ducklings now living with the chickens until a pen can be made for them. My plan was to let them live together in the winter since my coop is big & I would save money with the heat lamp when winter comes. So far I get about 4 eggs a day from 6 laying hens. I was given 2 silkies, but the female is too old to be laying . The rooster is rather quiet & I think they were pets. I was told that my chickens will lay eggs for maybe 2 more years then they are done. Then I will just keep then as pets. Can I give them things like watermelon rinds & corn on the cob? Everyone tells me just to let them wander but hawks are around. I use Diatomaceous Earth inside the coop for lice etc.

I had been just adding the chicken manure to the horse compost pile but guess I better stop that. Everyone tells me different advice. Can you recommend a good book on chicken care?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I’m armed. :)

[rightly_dividing]

Being new in Texas, I find stuff in the grocery store that is new to me. One of the items is fingerling potatos. They are just about the size and shape of a fat finger, and quite pricey, about $4 for a two or 3lbs bag. Are you familiar with these?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Yep. I sell the 50 lb. bag of starts for $80.00. :) Personally? They taste great, but they’re not worth the price to grow, IMHO. Kind of a ‘chi-chi’ snobby food around here. :)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Well, for the home grower that is; market growers get top dollar for them...

[Iscool]

Beautiful pictures...Thanks...