Gardening with chickens

[stuhayes2010]

I started my flock last year. I loved raising the birds, but hated how they destroyed my flower beds with constant scratching and kicking my mulch out in the yard. This season I finally found a way to have a lovely flower bed and koi pond without a fence.

I used large flat rocks to make a garden, making scratching impossible, while providing places to plant flowers in the spring. This has lasted a whole week! Last year, I woud remulch on Sunday, come home from work on Monday to find mulch scrattered to the wind.

I would love any fenceless gardening solutions you have.

Thanks
Joshua

 

[nivtup]

Fencing is our only solution.

 

[galanie]

The only plant mine don't eat or scratch up are roses. And they eat the odd rose leaf here and there even so. I've learned: they are like a swarm of locusts, eating everything in their path, and destroying that which they can't eat. Luckily, I only value my roses and veggie garden in the area they have access too. The garden is fenced off. Hardware cloth laid down will keep them from scratching the plants up but only fencing will keep them from eating the plants, sadly.

 

[Moabite]

I'm still cooking my mulch, so I appreciate the help the chickens give me, much better help then my 2 boys. The 6 of them do a great job spreading mulch. As soon as planting has begun, they will be banned from the garden until the plants are well established. Then I let them in a couple times a week, supervised, for several minutes to wreck havoc on the grasshoppers and caterpillars. They stir up the topsoil for me and then I put them away and hoe the mulch back up on to the rows. It worked real well last year anyway.

This year, I'll be building raised beds out of old pallets and will be able to cover them to protect them not only from chickens, but hungry wild birds too. If I had room, I'd make a special chicken garden just for them. I will be growing things just for them anyways.

 

[chickenlickin8]

We keep our girls locked up all the time. They are happy and don't know what they are missing being that they have never been out since Day 1. We have limited space in the backyard with beautiful landscape that is not for chicken consumption