MUCKED OUT CHICKEN COOP GETS TILLED UP INTO URBAN FARM GARDEN SITE

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm! Yesterday, I mucked out the now quite wet chicken yard due to some damp, wet days here in Jackson this week. I had not cleaned it out for about 2-months, which has been the norm here. I could go longer but due to the close proximity of my neighbors here in the city center of Jackson, TN., I try to be a little more courteous to the neighborhood and keep it pretty cleaned out. I want you to look at how rich my already black soil is in the garden site and now with this addition and with the next 5 or so months to "cook off" during this winter and early next spring and be less toxic to the plants that will go in then. I can probably start in late February 2011 and put in some spring greens that will tolerate the nitrogen well enough to get some early plantings started.

Hopefully, if you are working with your own urban flocks or even your small farming operations and have fresh manure available, you will follow this Garden Daddy and add your own fertilizer to your garden site. I may have mentioned before that if one has enough room for a hog or two, you should make some temporary paddocks for them, with some shelter available, in an area you would like to garden in next year. Put them in the area with temporary fencing in place, let them dig and root around and get out roots, brambles and brush and along with fertilizer they will add and then next year you will have a wonderful, worked up garden site that is all ready to go. Then move them to another area. This will give you some rotation areas and then go on and on. You can do the same in your backyard with a "chicken tractor", a coop that is mobile on wheels and moves from place to place, clearing bugs, weeds, seeds, etc. and then adding fertilizer at a new place each day. That was my original plan here but decided on more birds and that would not work then.

Enough...enough...So I leave you today with our ongoing gardening affirmation in mind: "URBAN FARMING: ONE (or 1-dozen) EGG AT A TIME!"