Adding Manure to the Patch

The last week, after having finally dug the patch, I've been going back over it adding manure. I have 'poultry manure' in the form of pellets, and bags of 'farmyard manure', which is more what I was expecting.



Both only really talk about adding it on top of the soil and then raking it in. My plan has been to first add it to a depth of one-spade at the bottom of the patch, and fork it in. I start by pulling in a spade'd depth of earth and then first sprinkling the chicken pellets onto it. I fork them in, and then add a layer of manure to cover the area. It breaks up quite nicely as you take handfuls (with gloves on!) and then sprinkles nicely over the area. I then fork that in, and then pile it up to one side to create a space to pull the next bit of soil into, and so on.


I'm already down the last stretch, and should get this layer finished by this afternoon / evening.

I've also made a decision on the L-shape. One part of it is lower than the rest at the edge as it's missing a railway sleeper. In some ways that's handy as it's easier to access the patch, but it limits the amount of soil, and causes a slope. So I've decided to build it up again, but using some of the edging logs you can get. Which should hold the soil back to the same height, but still leave a bit of space for kneeling on.

I'm also going to have a lot of soil left over. The act of digging it has certainly aerated it, but also increased its volume somewhat. However I may need some extra soil for when I put in the second water butt on the end of the shed, but we'll see.

It looks like we may finally get some rain in a couple of days, so I'm going to try and get all the manure dug in by then. I'm expecting digging in the top spade's layer should be easier as there won't be as much bending over, and reaching into the patch. We'll see about that too.