Chicken manure, often called "black gold," provides one of the most nutrient-rich boosts for your soil. Different types of chicken manure exist, with variations in quality and composition. You can ...

I keep a running file in my office of questions, comments and horticulturally focused quizzical ruminations that get sent my way. Sometimes I save them because they might make for a good column.

For folks who don’t farm or garden, a malodorous pile of manure is usually a fly-attracting eyesore to be avoided. But most farmers and gardeners won’t turn up their noses at such a deposit; where ...

While at a meeting at the Ashland Public Library a few years ago I had a question from one of my readers and they asked me if they should use old farm yard soil in their vegetable garden. A few years ...

This past spring, I set out to design and maintain a sustainable garden in my backyard—and a big part of that project has involved using chickens to fertilize my soil and help process my compost pile.

Like cooking an egg, timing is everything with poultry manure, a Vermont master gardener warns this week. First-timers in the world of small-scale poultry might be tempted to shovel a week's worth of ...

Manure-based compost piles can be more work and take more time than piles fueled by kitchen scraps. But the rewards are too good to pass up. Many horse and mule stables in the area offer free manure ...