Veggie Gardens and Chickens! Tell about or show me pics of yours.....

[kla37]

My designated vegetable garden is outside of the fenced in backyard, and it is completely enclosed by an 8 ft fence to keep out deer. The other vegetables and edibles I have in the backyard I am going to have to put temporary fences around to keep the chickens out. It'll be interesting to see what they feel like eating!

 

[Judy]

They don't bother any of my trees or shrubs, but I gave up on mulching them, it's gone in no time. They also don't bother my oregano, thyme or rosemary. The garden had a 6' chicken wire fence around it, and they snuck in any time they got a chance. I planted some garlic chives along the fence and they pulled and ate them, roots and all. They do a wonderful cleanup job when harvest is over, though.

 

[Candice's Peeps]

We have a fenced in garden, and when I am pulling weeds, I often bring a couple chickens in to eat bugs and stuff, but they usually take some bites from the plants too...I can't imagine what would happen if they had access to the plants all day!

 

[Carols Clucks]

Today was our chickens favorite day in the garden, we left all the gates open so they could finish off anything that was left.

They love helping us turn the soil too, maybe that will be their next favorite day in the garden

 

[Mattemma]

My hens come running if they notice I am turning the soil.They love the worms and grubs. I let them in before planting,and then put up a 2 foot fence.If they go in I just shoo them out.If they are ranging I just walk with them,and herd them around with a stick. I let them back in during fall clean up.

They make a mess of the mulched beds.

 

[Mrs. K]

They really love a freshly turned bed, as in you rototilled, or hand dug, smoothed it out perfectly, and transplanted a lovely bunch of new flowers, then go in to get a well earned glass of ice tea, and come back out to admire your hard work, only to find chickens laying nearly flat in complete bliss, admidst a wreck of a dust baths and digging.

Fence the garden in or the chickens out, they will destroy things.

However, you can put baby chicks in the garden by early June, they will run around getting good exercise, find shady places to sleep, and eat little bugs. They are quite safe there, and will grow nicely for a couple of weeks there. But once they get some size on them, get them out of there!

MrsK

 

[maizey]

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beautiful garden and pages! Love it

 

[Barry Natchitoches]

I am a Tennessee Master Gardener who specializes in growing organic vegetables and small fruits.


Chickens in the garden can be a mixed blessing. On the plus side, chickens do keep the bug population and weed population down.


On the negative side, they also keep the earthworm population down, and since earthworms are the best fertilizer producers and garden tillers God has provided us, that is a BIG negative.


In addition, although chicken manure is a great fertilizer, CHICKEN MANURE MUST AGE AT LEAST 5 MONTHS BEFORE IT IS SAFE TO USE IN GROWING FOOD CROPS!


This means that you do NOT want your chickens roaming (and pooping) on soil you are going to grow most crops on, at least not within five months of planting time. I mean, think about it -- do you really want to eat lettuce that your chickens have pooped on?


The five month rule comes from the fact that chickens frequently have disease pathogens in their poop, and you don't want those disease pathogens to get on the food that you grow -- especially if it is food that will not be cooked, like lettuce, berries or tomatoes. Most disease pathogins will die off within that five month period. IF your flock has salmonella problems, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you want to use their manure until a full year has passed, and even then, I wouldn't use their manure on any food that was not going to be cooked. Fortunately, most properly run, relatively clean backyard chicken operations don't have alot of problems with salmonella -- its more the problem of huge, industrialized chicken operations.


Another negative is that the chickens will often want to eat the food you are trying to grow. They will completely devour small lettuce, cole crops, or greens before the plants even have much of a chance to grow. They love pretty much all berries and tomatoes too.


That said, there are ways to control their activities and thus minimize the damage they do to the garden.


The most effective way to keep the chickens from damaging your garden is, of course, to keep the chickens contained in a mobile henhouse (ie., chicken tractor). Contained in this way, you can place them where they can do no harm.


But this is not practical for all people.


Other things you can do to minimize the damage chickens do to your garden include the following:


1, Fence in your garden, or else, fence in your chickens. But that will take a pretty tall fence to keep them out. My large chickens can be contained with a five foot tall fence most of the time, but my smaller hens can get over the five foot fence if they want to. One time (and one time only) my younger rooster -- then about an eight month old cockerel -- flew on top of a seven foot tall henhouse in order to get out of his fenced in chicken yard.


2, Grow your critical plants under floating row cover or remay cloth covered tunnels. I do alot of this. Not only does it protect the growing soil -- and later, the emerging crop -- from their fresh deposits of chicken poop, but it also protects the plants from cold weather and flying insects that can harm the crop. Gardeners regularly extend their growing season by several weeks using row covers, and if you want to learn more about growing food crops under row cover, it is in that context where you will find an extensive collection of information on the web about row cover use in the garden. But it works as well for protecting our crops from chickens as it does for protecting our crops from cold weather.


3, Grow crops like tomatoes and other vine crops -- even summer squash -- vertically, using cyllinders (cages) made of 5 foot tall concrete reinforcement wire. You cut the wire into five foot long pieces, and then use pilers to hook the ends together to create a wire cyllendar (cage). Plant your tomato or other crop into the soil, then put the cage around it, burying the cage about six inches into the ground to give it stability and support. This cage will help support even a very heavy crop, but as an added bonus -- it makes it virtually impossible for your chickens to get at your tomatoes or other crop.


4, Keep the chickens locked up in their henhouse during critical times in the gardening season -- like the first month to six weeks after you plant. After the plants get larger, some plants will be able to withstand a certain amount of damage.


5, Severely limit the number of chickens allowed to free range at any one time. I have about 2000 square feet of cultivated garden space (though the actual garden is about 100 feet by 50 feet, alot of that is grass walkways). But the largest number that I allow to free range at any one time is four birds. A small number of birds in a large garden will not do a whole lot of damage, however, a large number of birds in a small garden will completely destroy it.


6, If you are figuring on using an organic mulch like wood chips or shredded leaves in the garden to block weeds and regulate moisture levels underneath, bear in mind that chickens LOVE to scratch in the mulch, and they WILL scratch the mulch right out of your garden. Short of pulling out the hatchet and the killing cone, I don't know how you can stop a chicken from scratching the mulch out of the garden -- other than growing under row covers, that is. Which takes us back to #2 above.

 

[Oscgrr]

I have a one-hundred square food garden and eleven chickens that would destroy it if I allowed them. They'll eat your seedlings and if you keep them away until the plants get established, they'll eat the blossoms. If you keep them out until the blossoms are bearing fruit, they'll eat that too and what they don't eat, they'll take a bite out of. Half the time they poke holes in the veggies it's to get at a bug that's crawling across a nice squash or tomato. What's worse is when they go shopping in the neighbors garden. It's one thing to have them destroy my hard work but all the free eggs in the world might not fix the hard feelings if they eat my neighbors garden.

My solution is to just make their run as comfortable as possible and only allow them out an hour before sunset so they don't wander too far. This spring, I'm going to expand the size of the run. Granted, I haven't had chickens for very long but last year at only a few months old the little raptors did some serious damage to my tomatoes and poked holes in my pumpkins and spaghetti squash causing them to get moldy.

I'll let them run free in the early spring and after harvest but not in between. Besides, I like to work in my garden barefoot, nuff said there.

Good luck.

 

[HeritageHens]

I had to think ahead on this topic as I love to raise a lot of our food - in the same area as the chickens reside.

I've decided upon temporary fencing of one portion of the backyard which will require me to re-orient some of the raised beds. They have free run of the entire backyard when I let them out (under close supervision - hawks!) and they are enjoying the leaves of the strawberry plants - a LOT.
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I hope you are up to date on your tetanus shot! My doctor said that if I "play in the compost" I need to get a shot every 5 years instead of 10 years.