Yep, that'll work.

OR, you could bag it up, put it aside, and wait for those opportunities, to see and top dress bare dirt, that you know will just come along in the course of things next spring.

OR, you could dump some of that bagged manure into a drum or barrel and make manure water for feeding to plants next spring whenever they seem to need it, right through the chips.

All sorts of stuff will work.

WEAR A MASK! A really good particle mask meant for working with manures and such,

Top-dressing would work

Break up the manure clumps and scatter it reasonably evenly over the plots.

Rake it into the top layer of mulch - just rake enough to get them mixed.

Let winter do its thing.

It's not clear to me if you plan to leave all the wood chips there. If you are going to leave them rot in place eventually, I (a lazy gardener) would just dump it on top and let nature and weather take its course.

I plan to leave the wood chips where they are. I don't expect them to break down in a hurry, though it would be nice if they did. There is a bunch of not even remotely finished cold compost on those plots, under the wood chips. I want the wood chip cover to help keep it moist and un-frozen so the bacteria and the bugs can keep working on it over the winter (which has been crazy so far, anywhere from 30 to 80 degrees F). I'd like to add nitrogen mainly to the material underneath the chips, to help it along and keep the worms warm.

In the spring I hope to plant into the material under the wood chips, just scraping a small amount aside to plant and then shifting it back to keep the soil covered and the weeds down. Over time the chips should break down and add OM to the area, but they're there primarily as a protective mulch, with compost being a secondary role.

I concur with lazy_gardens' approach: spread it on and let the winter rain water it in. Unless it's really dry in GA during the winter - which I doubt - you won't need any extra water.

Dry isn't a problem so much as wind. Anything light or small that isn't entangled with something else or weighed down ends up going airborne sooner or later.

Beware the flying chicken manure! LOL

Seriously though, valid point. If you raked it into the surface of the wood chips it should be OK, but only you know your local conditions. There's chicken manure and there's chicken manure, so I'm not sure what yours will look like.

If I ever author a thread titled "How to keep your mulch down during a tornado?" someone please come along and remind me I'm being ridiculous.

Why has that garden ben retired?

If that clay is that difficult to work that says there is not enough organic matter in that soil so the Soil Food Web will not be able to do much work, lacking the raw material, organic matter, they need.

While the chicken manure would be a source of Nitrogen that could feed the Soil Food Web the wood chips are quite dense and difficult to digest. Shredded leaves at this time would be much better for that soil.

kikmmq is kimmsr

It's only a temporary retirement. At this time in the year nothing we put there is growing and productive anymore, so it's done trying for the year. Besides, it seemed easier to add to it when there aren't growing plants to disturb.

I cut off what was left of the plants at ground level and left the roots and cut tops in place, added a layer of semi-decayed lawn clippings and some green poke sallet that had been scythed down where it was growing as a weed, mixed in some mostly finished compost as a micorbial inoculation, spread some stale urine that turned up while cleaning, then buried all that in a 5" thick layer of brown dead leaves from a neighbor's back yard. (Incidentally, his place is in much better shape, and those leaves had red earthworms and what looked like a few red wigglers living in them.) Into the leaves I sprinkled all the UCG and ground egg shells I could come up with as they came up, and some tomatoes that had been poorly stored and gone rotten.

I came into a slightly rotten intact pumpkin a few days later, gutted it out (seeds were still good for roasting), cut a drainage hole, filled it with a damp mix of shredded paper, cardboard, and more bdown leaves infested with red earthworms and what might be blues, then left it in the middle of the plot hoping it will become a worm castings bomb. They still live in there, I check now and then.

About a week later I had the opportunity to cover the whole thing with a mix of wood chips, shredded green and brown leaves, pine needles, and whatever else is in that assortment that Trees Unlimited dumped in the back of my driveway, so I put down 4 inches of that. I may add more later, time and weather permitting, but for now it's been left to sit and do its thing as is.

Also, it looks like somebody scattered a loaf of moldy bread over the top of the chips recently, so I might be getting some wild bird manure added.

Also also, a bunch of soil worms had moved into the clay under where that pile of lawn clippings had been set to wait for use as mulch, then ended up partially composting itself before I could move it. I plucked up a couple dozen and tossed them into the plot as I buried it in OM.

Also x3, the plot that was used this year and has since been retired for the season was amended the hard way before we started. We nearly killed ourselves breaking it up for planting, and dug in as much bagged bought compost, shredded green and brown leaves, UCG, sand, spent cat litter, and chicken manure as we could come up with.

Yes, I've heard the warnings about toxoplasmosis and cat feces. No, I don't believe they're good reason to avoid using an abundant source of nitrogen. Stray, neighbor, amd wild cats, dogs, possums, raccoons, and god knows what else pass through here regularly, they crap wherever they damn well please. It's called clean your stuff before you eat it.

Sounds good to me Jon. Carry on!

CAT LITTER!!!! OMG!!!!

If it was not the clay kind (Feline pine, pellet fuel, and other plant-based ones) and if you sift out the feces before you add it ... works fine as a high nitrogen compost material.

If that pumpkin got so much worm attention, why not find some, break them up and lay them out in the area you want worked on? Shredded leaves and pumpkin? Sounds like a great recipe to me! Nancy