Planting into pure chicken manure

Hello friends. Last fall I was givin quite a bit of chicken manure. I piled it up in rows along a hillside and covered. I decided to do this after watching the No Dig Abundace videos on YouTube. Now I'm wondering how long I have to wait to plant into it? Is there somekind of simple test that I can determine if it's mellowed enough to plant in? Thank you.

Simplest way is to pop some seeds in there and see if they sprout. You could cover the area with easily germinating cover crop and see when it takes hold.

so scott thought you might want to know about what happens when you give plants too much food -- specifically they need a lot more water and then become insect and disease prone.

this post is already on permies: https://permies.com/t/46427/gardening-beginners/feeding-plants-lead-fragility-including#370485

i love sheet mulching and no till.

what to do at this point, grow some corn and pump the extra nutrients into a heavy feeder? grow green manure (meaning a crop you do not intend to eat) and then use that for mulch? spread out into other parts of your farm?

If I recall my soil science, the manure could be tieing up soil N to decompose. I agree, plant something in there, see what gives. If it's a normal to deep green color, you're OK. Light green and you will have to add supplemental N. Best of luck, please keep us posted.

If you got pure chicken manure with nothing added in, it takes up to 3 years to decompose completly. Like other said, plnat some plant that need a lot of potassium like corn squashes...

But here for the last two years my chicken are on deep litter during winter. I put peatmoss, straw and leafs in fall. Then during winter I give them all my chicken scraps. they eat want they like and scratch the rest. Once a week I return and mix the straw under the rooster so the manure doesn't accumulate and so it doesn't smell. In spring, since everything has been mix and the ratio manure and the rest is low, I put everything directly in thegarden with no problem. It decomposes in place. Since I have more than I need, I pile the rest of the litter, cover and deal with it like if I had started my compost pile from start Geoff Lawton's way. Everything is in it but already mix and started decomposting. Doing the 4-2-2-2-2- method, I end up having compost that I use around trees and new beds.

Isabelle