I've built 6 1/2 foot tall cages out of concrete remesh to match the height of my chicken run fence and plant my vine crops in them. As you can see, the chicken compost in the base tire really produces the squash. The tires have the sidewall cut out of them from the downside and I fill the tire with compost from the chicken coop with the remesh cage surrounding the tire. Any squash vines that get through the fence or overtops and hangs down gets pruned by the chickens. They like it. I always have more squash then I can eat and store, any that goes bad in storage gets tossed to the chickens in winter. My Garden shares this fence with the Chicken Run and has a chicken "Pop" door that I open in the fall for the chickens to access and clean up my garden for me. They till and fertilize and glean everything, then in the spring it only takes a light till to prep the seed bed for planting.
Quote:I have clay soil also, it's hard to see in the picture, but the remesh cage is around a truck tire that I have cut the sidewall out of on the down side. I fill it with compost from the chicken coop (deep litter method on sub-ground level dirt) and you can see how prolific stuff grows on compost.
I'm definitely doing that this spring...it will also provide some shade from the blasting summer sun that hits their run midday. Thanks for the great idea!
