A few weeks ago I joined the large number of Seattle chicken owners using reclaimed coffee chaff as chicken bedding. Chaff is the papery outer sheath of the coffee bean and something that David Ruggiero of www.UpCycleNW.com is trying to put to good use.
David’s company recycles things from coffee roasters like chaff, inedible beans and burlap bags. These things are great for gardens and chickens and are all low cost or free. I had been reading posts about other chicken owners on the Seattle Urban Farming Coop using it and seen posts like this one which piqued my interest. After doing some research to be sure it wouldn’t in any way harm the chickens or my veggie garden once this chaff was composted I took the plunge.
I picked up 4 bags of it from David who was every bit as helpful and fun as he appears in the Tangled Nest post above. My car instantly smelled heavenly but the kids complained the whole way home. The chickens didn’t seem to mind the change at all and have continued to lay eggs at the same pace as before. I haven’t been using it long enough yet to see if it breaks down any faster than the pine chips I was using but I can tell you that if I had chaff instead of wood shavings while we were raising the chicks indoors, my house would have smelled more coffee shop than pet shop which makes for a happier husband.
All in all I’m thrilled with the chaff and will be using it as long as it’s available. I also picked up some organic burlap bags from David which I plan to use to grow potatoes in the parking strip as soon as Territorial gets around to sending the seed potatoes out (hello, are you reading this Territorial?).
Annette, can I use the potato sprouts from the potatoes I got from you last fall that were organic? Or is there a reason you’re going with the territorial ones?
Hi Carolyn,
You can! I wanted to try some new potato varieties this year but I’ll be using some of my sprouting taters to plant. What you want to do is find out if they are early or late varieties and that will tell you how much hilling you need to do. If they are early no hilling required. If they are late you can plant the spuds in a deep trench (or burlap bag), add dirt then wait for the plants to grow up one layer. Add another row of dirt then repeat up to say 6 times. Each layer will result in more taters. If they are early though they will just give you one layer. That is the beauty of the burlap bag. Also, you want about 3 eyes in each seed so you can cut the potatoes up into several seeds if you have enough eyes. Does that make sense?
Nice blog! Full of great information and innovative ideas.
Kathy – I tried to comment on your blog but it won’t allow anonymous comments and I don’t have any of those free blogs it will allow comments from. I love your tall hoop house! Where abouts are you? It looks like you aren’t too far from here but have a lovely large yard.
I bet the freshly bedded hen house smelled wonderful! This sounds like a great resource. I have my seed potatoes chitting and am planning to do the big potato planting process in a week or so – taking some time off from work and planning to do that on one of the days off. Going to try the John Jeavon’s method of intensively planting potatoes this year. See if I can improve my production levels significantly.
Great post!
I had to look that up. I am mostly planting in burlap bags but I may have enough spuds to do a bed as well. I increase my grow space by adding 2 3×4 beds to the semi-shady back and taking out the grass parking strip where I can grow things in burlap bags. I don’t want to plant directly in the dirt since it’s next to cars and people have been walking dogs there for years (and still do) so I’m tryin the raised bag route…