Got mountains of manure? Plant taters.

Here on the poultry farm we have no shortage of chicken manure, we seem to have piles sitting all around the farm.  Each spring we spread some on the garden but a garden can only use so much manure.  So we have what seems like mountains of poo.

  

We continually add to this pile, so one side of this mountain is nicely rotted down and composted into  rich,  loamy soil ready to use.  The others side of the mountain is still pretty hot and needs to sit a bit longer before used.

My garden spot is still to wet to plant and I have a bad case of spring fever, so I'm going to put this pile to good use.   I've never tried this before but it should work out just fine.

  

I took my shovel and  broke up the surface of the pile a bit.  As you can see, my two lovely helpers decide this is where they could get involved. 

I took my seed potatoes and cut them into pieces, like my grandpa Johnny Wagner taught me, he always said to leave each piece at least two eyes.

Be sure top plant them eyes facing up.  This might be old news for some of you experienced gardeners but believe it or not there are some folks out there that have never planted a tater before. 

If you have a compost pile, a pile of dead leaves or grass clippings you can use that to stick your potatoes in also.

I turned my back for just a second to pick up the hoe and cover the potatoes and look who steels one and runs off to eat it.  Not sure why but he'll do back flips for raw potatoes.

 I also stuck a few onion sets in at the same time.

Once I was finished poking around in the pile, I covered the area with some old chicken wire.  This will keep the chickens from digging around on their free range days.

If you have a neat space saving way to plant potatoes, leave it in the comments below so that others can see your great ideas.

Have a great day!

Angie