A strange title? Not so much if you are an organic gardener.
Having just read an article about keeping chickens in the backyard it made clear some thoughts about gardening that have been swimming around my toilet bowl of a head recently.
1. There is never enough compost generated by my 2 person family compared to the amount I need year round to make my veggie garden thrive.
2. Unless there have been peas or beans in the plot, or loads of grass clippings in the compost, there is not enough nitrogen in the soil to give good yields of veggies.
3. Other gardeners in the area who use fertilizer are getting better yields than my garden, especially corn – the great nitrogen/water eater. My corn was pathetic this year.
I do know that plants thrive on food, water and correct amounts of sunlight. I have been getting the water and sunlight angle correct but have failed somewhat on the food. My plants need more nitrogen – which brings us back to the title of this post, which is Poop. They need more poop. As I am not going to be keeping chickens anytime soon, this means that I will have to buy bags of poop – chicken or steer – drag it home and spread it thickly on the garden areas in need. I’m not sure whether this falls under the category of organic or not – as I will not know completely the origin of said poop – or what the animals were fed. But it has to be done and I do declare this the Year of the Poop.
Not sure where I will get the extra organic compost from so I will get back to you on that!
We’ll see if there is a marked improvement on yields in 2011.