Gandalf: You definitely heard right. Chicken poop is pretty damn hardcore. Trick is to mix it up with about 50 percent or even more fine straw and allow all of that to compost for about 12 months. What you are left with then is bit of a miracle-fert it really is. Works fine as a top dressing, also no hassles mixing it in, but still it IS potent, you only need as much as you would of a chemical fert (by weight)... We have a product here in South Africa called Rapid Raiser and I can tell you it does just that. It is the chicken and straw compost pressed into pellets. I guess in pellet form it is a bit slower-acting. I have grown some BADASS bud using ONLY RR as a fert. I stopped using it after learning that the chickens in the area it is produced are often fed bone and blood meal made from chicken scraps, the idea of cannibal poop was a bit weird to me.
Check out the data sheet, using this stuff I honestly had ZERO deficiencies all the way through:
http://www.neutrog.co.za/rapid-raiser-3
Anyhow, I reckoned I'd show you guys my new soil cook step-by-step, this is not a supersoil but trust me I won't need to add much once the cook is finished, only some bio-food for the microbes
So first in is a bag of mushroom compost. Then on top I added my indigenous 'fungal' inoculant:
Indigenous fungi came from this patch here under a pile of horse poop:
You can SEE all the life in there. A close up of a little dung nug reveals a lovely coating of fungi, sorry I only noticed now the actual fungus was not all that in focus LOL I will get a better pic later:
Next up, a fat layer of dark black soil
Plenty of dolomite lime, the mix at this point is close on 60 litres so it was about 20 tablespoons of it:
Then we have our bacterial inoculant. This is a single coco-brick, but expanded using a fermented compost extract, it got 2 days worth of fresh bubbles to kick the nuts of any anaerobic bacteria right in:
Then comes the volcanic rock dust, also a bit of a shitty pic but hey I was STONED:
And finally, the only inert ingredient in this mix, Leca and Perlite:
So we end up with something looking kinda like this:
Over the next 4 weeks, it will go much darker. The smell right now is almost fruity sweet thanks to the bacterial inoculation. The soil will be ready when this smell has gone, and that trademark mushroomy musk takes over. It really is a very pleasant aroma when done
Anyhow my bacterial compost extract, it was done in the same way as you guys do your teas, except zero bubbles during the fermentation process which got a kick-start using a fruit-rot 'tea'. It was made using composted horse poop like I showed before, and rough alfalfa in a bucket, about 2 weeks fermenting outside. Just like humans, fermented foods are better and more easily eaten for the plant's purposes. It is like comparing a soy bean, hard and chewy, to ToFu, soft and instantly digested.
Some people know these fermented compost extracts as 'bio-food' as they are very easily eaten by your microbial life-forms. They friggin LOVE this stuff
As I mentioned I give it a two-day bubble before use, and add a sock-full of all sorts of rotting stuff to really boost the microbe-count a fuktonne:
Whatever I don't use will get some sugar water mixed in, not white sugar treacle sugar only, and be put away in a cool place to calm down far as multiplication of microbes go a bit. As I need it, it will go back to the bubbling just to be safe.
This is my gramps' method for growing monstrous tomatoes. I added the steps of bubbling the compost extract myself as a tweak, I was just using some logic there after what I have learned of late, and it is simply to allow my aerobic bacteria to out-compete my anaerobic bacteria, just giving them an edge before they hit the soil. I guess a cook will sort it out anyhow, but a little head-start will do no harm
I really do LOVE this stuff.
Edit: Forgot to mention, I water the mix down using a fermented kelp extract, not much is needed. Saves the soil the energy of having to break the kelp down
I will top-dress with EWC at the planting stage, this soil really needs nothing more at the moment!