I keep some chickens and I usually bury their manure near my vegetables. I found that digging the soil near my crops will sometimes damage their root. So I come up with this idea and wants to hear your opinions. It is called a nutrient pot.



I would like to bury my kitchen waste using this method too. I don't like to dig near my vegetables. Do you think this method can replace digging? Thanks.

I'm tempted to try versions of this but am personally not up for having a lot of pots sitting around the garden.
I suppose I might like taking my 5 gallon bucket with lots of holes, loading that up, setting the lid in, move it around in the garden, and it can serve as a seat as well.

@Sally: Yes, you really got it, the whole point is to move it around when needed, but hopefully not too much moving because I hurt my back recently (not a big deal but still prefer not to be carrying heavy objects). I am glad you can think of some use for this design, it was designed around covering up fresh chicken manure odor's while at the same time leach a little bit of nutrient every time you water the pot(I heard we should age the manure first but I never put them on edibles only flowers). It was designed to have many pots at many different places of the garden, but minimal moving if I can help it : - ) When it is raining too heavily and you don't want the pot to leach out too soon, you can cover it with something, like softwood planks etc.,and then you might be able to sit on it like you said(hopefully the pot is sturdy).

Filling, moving and maintaining multiple pots...lots of hassle. I'll stick with adding my chicken waste and bedding to the compost pile where it does a fantastic job of speeding the composting process. Then the end result can be used as mulch that does not require digging in around your plants.

Manure would leach nutrients... but kitchen waste? The container would be too small to compost it so I would guess it would just rot to mush or attract fruit flies.

I once used a similar technique to grow squash: sank a 1-gal pot filled with compost halfway into the soil, planted squash around it and created a basin. Watered directly into the pot to leach compost tea into the root zone. Refreshed the compost a couple of times during the growing season. Seemed to work ok. But it was already compost.

John I hope it works...partly depends on how many chickens and how much garden area.

I fear the buckets stuff will decompose very slowly and not really compost in that sense. Be prepared to leave them a long time, or deal with possible nastiness.

@JBarstool: a single pot is good too , all depending on which kind of material that you had, if it is high enough than it can serve as a compost bin in situ (the finished compost should go directly onto the beds)

@Zoë:yeah, might be too small for kitchen waste. (but the attract fruit flies part, it is covered up with soil so no worry. still not big enough for kitchen waste, it sounds like a job for a proper compost bin)

@Sally: thanks Sally. Chicken manure disappear real quick in the pots, sometimes I found fat earthworms in them while checking. Might be the wetness in the pot attracted them.

Seems like a lot of bother when you can just top dress the perennials in the late fall with compost . And spread compost on the vegetable ground in the fall or spring and then rototill it in .

My hometown they come around and suckup the leaves from the gutter, as before people would bag them up and dump them at teh recycle place but few used the city supplied recycling bags that decompose.
The vacuum runs all October

They also pick-up garden/residue every week or what ever some one puts in that 90 gallon tub, then they bag and sell it.

I've done a similar thing in the past with some thick cardboard tubes that roll-up awnings were shipped in. They were about 12" diameter. Cut into sections about 3 feet tall, they were in my garden for several years before they eventually collapsed and decomposed. I put them in discreet places throughout cultivated areas and filled them with organic material repeatedly, as it became available, and as the contents dwindled.

Living in a condo, I only have a small compost bin. I do move it around, and it seems like whatever drains out of the bin does fertilize the plants near the bin.

At the least, it may shelter and encourage little soil critters and gives them a good diet!

Yes - mine gets full of wrigglers - they climb up in there, establish a nursery, and then all go back down into the soil. A win-win situation.
https://garden.org/ideas/view/...

I think the essence of this idea is that you hope to build compost right where it gets used, instead of having to (oh my aching back) move finished compost from a pile to where it is to be used. Every year this becomes more attractive to me. But I always use my whole full sun garden area for plants, not piles or buckets.

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