It Takes a Village to Raise a Garden

Since I began urban farming, I have become intimately acquainted with poops.

Cookiecrumb advised me that chicken poop would grow great veggies and Moonbear had some as a by-product of her egg-laying chickens, so I was in business, so to speak. However, I learned that the chicken poop I retrieved from Moonbear's idyllic back yard is too new, too "hot" to put straight onto the garden, being this year's "issue." So, I have started a compost pile with the contents of the big bag the hens contributed, some soil and vermiculite knocked out of pots of flowers I have saved, and the yard waste from my latest biomass reduction foray into the garden.

That's fun, but it didn't solve the need for some kind of fertilizer for the growing things so I took Dagny's advice to visit Annie's Annuals in search of plant food. They were closed on the Monday I chose to go so, undeterred, I went to my favorite haunt, Pastime Hardware in El Cerrito and, lo and behold, they had poop, but theirs was bat poop, nicely aged and attractively packaged with assurances as to its potency and organic nature.

It has taken, so far, four adult college graduates to get this tiny garden going and I'm pretty sure I'd save money by simply buying ripe tomatoes when they come in season but what a great bonding experience for four diverse bloggers and what an education I have received in the nutritive value of poops!