Best poop for peppers?

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

Have never used straight chicken poop before.  Decided to experiment with five plants.  Poop is aged about a year, but aged inside, by itself, no rain and not mixed with much hay or straw.  Dug holes in rows, put in poop, and planted directly.  So far, none of the burning I expected.  Had always thought chicken poop was too harsh to be used alone.  Usually, I scrape the barn and put it in a pile outdoors for a year with all sorts of other compost (leaves, twigs, grass, kitchen waste).

Anyone have any experience with chicken poop?

What animal waste is the best?  Thinking on fetching horse for next year but no experience.  Its free, but will take much work and not sure I can convince the kids to shovel horse poop.
 
Rabbit poo, hands down. Nature's finest "cold" fertilizer. Also, really great NPK ratio. (bet you'll never guess what ratio) You can put it right down, no composting. I have even grown with a mix of coco and fresh rabbit poo. Mixed the berries right into the coco, and off to the races.
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Chicken poo is alright, but it's real hot. Lots of Nitrogen from Urea and ammonium. You want that stuff to sit and fizzle for a few months before use. But you did it right. Your rewards will be obvious.
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Horse poo is great, but requires the longest composting time of all, due to the high amounts of cellulose (wood) from the bedding. Horse poo from any farm is mostly "not poo", so there's that. But if it's free, and you've got space, there's no reason that you shouldn't be doing it. Also, with your health predicament, AJ, I'd suggest that you throw away the tiller, and top dress your garden every year with horse poo. Do a "no-till" routine. Horse poo has lots of weed seed, so try to get it hot from the center of the pile when you pick it up, so that it's somewhat sanitized. You can safely top dress up to 12" per year without any nitrogen fixing issues.
 
I really like worm poop. In fairness though, I haven't experimented with too many other types. I have chicken poop from my birds in the composter but haven't used it yet. I put worm castings in each transplant hole and it seems to work pretty well. I even top dressed my corn and onions and they're growing like crazy.
 
Like everyone is saying chicken is good if you let it rest a long time. In my experience Rabbit is amazing. I had a couple rabbits that I kept just for that reason. Excellent top dressing as well as for mixing in the soil.
My grandkids were too young to know any better and fed them mango leaves. No more rabbits. :mope:
I didn't have the heart to tell them why the rabbits died but they're old enough now, time to think about getting rabbits again.
 
Worm poo

Rabbit poo

Llama poo

All three can be used from bung to soil

I have used rabbit and llama with great results.


I am working on getting worm this week and see how it performs.

Saw a nice video the other day from a pepper grower that had some excellent pod numbers with worm poo.
 
I've used worm, cow, and sheep. Unfortunately, I haven't taken notes to see which works the absolute best. For in-ground, it's always either been cow or sheep (and periodic drenches of fish fert). For pots, it's always worm in the mix and a top dressing of cow, along with the periodic fish. 

Next year, I'll start with chicken. 
 
AJ Drew said:
Have never used straight chicken poop before.  Decided to experiment with five plants.  Poop is aged about a year, but aged inside, by itself, no rain and not mixed with much hay or straw.  Dug holes in rows, put in poop, and planted directly.  So far, none of the burning I expected.  Had always thought chicken poop was too harsh to be used alone.  Usually, I scrape the barn and put it in a pile outdoors for a year with all sorts of other compost (leaves, twigs, grass, kitchen waste).

Anyone have any experience with chicken poop?

What animal waste is the best?  Thinking on fetching horse for next year but no experience.  Its free, but will take much work and not sure I can convince the kids to shovel horse poop.
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Be careful using straight manure. USDA NOP regulations require a 90 day period to elapse between application of uncomposted manure and harvest of fruits which do not touch the ground, or 120 days for produce which does touch the ground, to reduce the risk of e-coli or other bacterial contamination of produce.
 
This applies to all forms of guano and manure. E.g. I have to document and wait at least 90 days between the application of seabird guano and harvest on my organic grow for crops which do not come in to ground contact (peppers).
 
There's a reason for this, and it involves humans getting sick, so even if you are just doing a backyard grow I'd recommend following the precautions that are required for commercial grows!
 
BTW for peppers I use OMRI listed seabird guano in my potting mix, waiting the requisite 90 days before harvest. Not a big deal on peppers since I pot them up in early April but don't harvest until mid summer.
 
 
Those organic crop rules are a joke. I'm dead convinced that they are a scam to give somebody a job.
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If you use certain manures, you want to hot compost for a certain amount of time, due to potential pathogens. But rabbit isn't one of them. Of all the things that rabbits can transmit to humans, almost all of them are host-to-host - meaning, you must have direct contact with the animal. That's a little different case, if you have HIV, are undergoing chemo, or for some reason, decide to put the poo directly into your mouth.
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Aside from carnivores, two of the worst kinds of manure to use for pathogen transfer, are cow manure, and Canadian goose, of all things.
 
The hog farmer friend we had would compost his hog poop. One year he loaded it up to spread and used that spot for tomatoes. His plants were massive but he hardly got any fruit, Big gorgeous plants with no maters on them. :D Ive seen that happen with beans but never with maters.
 
Ive been checking around with the "rabbit rescue" places in search of fresh poo. Sounds funny but we have a couple around that specialize in unwanted pet rabbits.
 
ShowMeDaSauce said:
The hog farmer friend we had would compost his hog poop. One year he loaded it up to spread and used that spot for tomatoes. His plants were massive but he hardly got any fruit, Big gorgeous plants with no maters on them. :D Ive seen that happen with beans but never with maters.
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It's most likely something that the hogs were eating that inhibited flowering, or a deficiency of something else in the manure. It's an old myth that "too much Nitrogen prevents fruit/flowering".
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I'd opt for hormones in the feed, on that one. LOL
 
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