How to Make Chicken Manure Tea Fertilizer
Increased interest in organic, sustainable gardening has revived use of simple animal manure as an effective and safe fertilizer. Chicken manure is cheap and easy to obtain, whether you keep your own chicken or visit a poultry farm. It has a rich nitrogen content that plants just love, and it helps them retain moisture better. Does this Spark an idea?
Things You'll Need
- Burlap or grain sacks
- 35- to 50-gallon trash can or bin (one per sack of manure) with cover
- Shovel
- 2 to 3 feet of jute or cotton rope
- Large stick
- Rock or brick (one per sack of manure)
- Access to chicken manure
- Water source, such as a garden hose
Instructions
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1
Acquire chicken manure. If you keep your own chickens, you can collect it fresh. Otherwise, contact a local poultry farm or farm that keeps chickens. Each chicken will produce approximately 50 gallons of manure per year, so even if the farm makes its own manure tea, it will more than likely have plenty of manure to spare.
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2
Using your shovel, fill each burlap/grain sack approximately 3/4 full with the manure. Add a rock or a brick, and then tie the sack closed with a short length of rope.
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3
Place each filled sack inside a trash can or bin. Make sure that you've placed the bin where you won't mind it standing for awhile. It will become too heavy after filling to move.
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4
Fill each trash can/bin with water. The sack, weighed down with the rock or brick, should not float.
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Cover, and let each can "brew" for approximately three weeks. The water will infuse with the nitrogen and mineral from the chicken manure. Stir periodically with the long stick.
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After three weeks, water your plants with your chicken manure tea. Pour the tea at the base of the plants rather than down over the top .
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Tips & Warnings
To fertilize seedlings or delicate plants, dilute your chicken manure tea with water on a 1 to 1 ratio. After brewing the chicken manure tea, you can dispose of the "tea bag" in your compost heap, if desired.
Don't apply chicken manure directly to your plants or into your soil. It can burn plants.
