Can you plant Lemongrass in your Chicken Garden?

OreoPlymothRock · Oct 17, 2014

Hello, I want to plant lemongrass, but I have 13 chickens in my backyard with no grass, no shrubs, and no greenery whatsoever. Will the lemongrass withstand the chickens? Can the chickens totally destroy the lemongrass? I would love a chicken garden, is this plant chicken proof and chicken resistant? Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

P.S. The Lemongrass I want to plant will be pre-grown, so it will already be a medium size plant.

N F C · Oct 17, 2014

Hi,

Here's a link for finding toxic plants and their effects:

http://www.poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html#L

I took a quick look and didn't see lemon grass on the list but you should probably check it out yourself. Hope this helps.

OreoPlymothRock · Oct 17, 2014

Thank you for the information. But can chickens destroy this plant? What I mean is is lemongrass a chicken resistant plant?

lazy gardener · Oct 17, 2014

In the situation you describe... a yard void of vegetation, they will destroy anything green. If you want to plant stuff that they can enjoy, you might make a frame of 2 x 4's and covered with hardware cloth to set on the ground, and plant some wheat and oats in the frame. They can eat the grass that comes up through the hardware cloth, but not destroy the root systems.

OreoPlymothRock · Oct 17, 2014

Thank you for your reply. I want to create a chicken garden, a beautiful garden in my backyard filled with lush vegetation that co-exists with the chickens. I have seen gardens like that before:

lazy gardener · Oct 17, 2014

Please keep us posted about how it goes for you. Your gardening zone, the plants you choose, how big an area you plant, and how well the plants tolerate chicken attention.

aart · Oct 18, 2014

OreoPlymothRock said:
Thank you for your reply. I want to create a chicken garden, a beautiful garden in my backyard filled with lush vegetation that co-exists with the chickens. I have seen gardens like that before:

Those are wonderful photo ops that don't show the parts of the garden that the chickens have destroyed....lol!!

If there is ALOT of vegetation in a LARGE area that the chickens are in, then there will be surviving foliage.
But in a bare yard as you describe, probably nothing you plant will fare well.
If you want a lovely garden with chickens wandering in it..... keep the chickens confined to a run until all the plants in your new garden are very well established....then allow the chickens out for one half hour just before dark and see what they do....progress as you see fit from there.

A friend has about an acre of yard filled with garden beds and more land than that, she has about 6 free range chickens. She has to fence off most her garden beds and borders in the spring, once all the plants are up and have grown large, she begins to take some of the fences down. Some parts of the gardens stay relatively unmolested, but other parts are quickly destroyed.

N F C · Oct 18, 2014

Good advice aart,

My chickens, if left un-penned/unsupervised, will get into anything and everything and they can't make the distinction between things that are "theirs" and things that aren't supposed to be eaten. Ravenous little things, chickens are!

donrae · Oct 18, 2014

x2 to aart's post.

The thing with chickens is, they don't have to eat the plant to destroy it. It's the scratching that does many of them in. I have an area that was tall grasses and weeds, some established rose bushes and daylillies. Fenced it off for a grow-out pen and it's now pretty much bare ground with the roses growing up in the middle. The bird's don't seem to eat the daylillies, but they scratch them and just generally destroy pretty much all the living greenery.

pdirt · Oct 19, 2014

I would say those photos don't show reality. Like others have said, they will destroy things. I suppose if you have a very large and well-established garden like shown in the photos, with only 1 or 2 chickens that are limited in the amount of time they can range in such a garden, then the garden will probably remain lush like shown in those photos. But who keeps 1 or 2 chickens? If there is anything you DON'T want them to tear up, scratch, destroy or eat, you will need to fence them off from it in some way.

Can you plant Lemongrass in your Chicken Garden?

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OreoPlymothRock

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OreoPlymothRock

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