Friday, June 4, 2010

Not Miss Bell’s Sweet Tea…

…but your turnip greens and all your other veggies will LOVE it! :-)…It’s chicken manure tea!

If you aren’t familiar with the song, it’s Good Directions by Billy Currington:


Anyway, manure tea is how I fertilize! I have chickens so it’s free and easy to make…if you don’t mind the “aroma” while it’s brewing. Manure tea is a great liquid fertilizer, an “energy drink” for your plants. I water my seedlings with it after they develop their second set of leaves, I soak the roots of my transplants in it before planting and I give them another drink when the plants begin to bloom.

Here is the recipe:

Get a 5 gallon bucket and fill it one third with cured chicken or other manure. Fill the bucket with water and give everything a stir. Set it out in the sun for three days, giving it a stir each day.105_1487

I‘m using an old plastic wheelbarrow as a tub since a 5 gallon bucket doesn’t produce enough at one time for me.

At the end of three days,pour the liquid into another 5 gallon bucket, straining through a piece of screen, or loosely woven fabric or anything else that will act as a sieve for you to keep the solids back. I’m using the top to an old fire pit…which I am repurposing. 106_6710

Pour the tea concentrate through the sieve

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and then dilute the concentrate to the look of “sweet tea”. It’s now ready to serve…no ice needed! :-)

105_1469 Save the leftover solids, they still have lots of nutrients left, to put into your lasagna beds or compost pile.

Today was a major manure day around here! My oldest son and his fiance are the barn managers at Double C stables, so I have access to ALOT of horse manure! After they cleaned out their paddocks, they gave me 3 dump truck loads of manure, soil hay mixture. My son brought the tractor over and spread the mixture over the lasagna beds that I’m starting.

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It sure beats using the wheelbarrow! It would have taken me weeks to do what he did in an hour! Beautiful! Thank you Steven!!!

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And here is my bonus:

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Many, many of nature’s tillers, earthworms! They are wonderful at preparing the ground!

I’ll leave you with something prettier to look at, I gave my large clay tipsy planter a make-over.

Before:

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I sprayed 3 new smaller clay pots with sealer to help hold in the moisture.

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I put it together the same way as I put together my smaller Tipsy Planter. Now it looks like this:

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Happy Gardening!

Sharing my tea recipe here:

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5 comments:

  1. Ewwww! And awwwww!! It is great for the plants!! I have yet to brew some this year!!
    And your tipsy planter is gorgeous!!
    Hugs
    SueAnn

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  2. Fabulous information. How many chickens do you have???

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  3. I LOVE that planter! So darling!

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  4. very familiar with the song! a favorite around here. love that planter!! not so much the worm ;)

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