I bet you are doing it wrong. Do like I did and grow the plants carefully, watering them, feeding them, and nurturing them and keeping them to one side where you're sure the chickens won't find them. Surround them with small obstacles so the hens would really have to work to get to them. Then I guarantee you, your girls will find them and gobble them down to the ground, just like mine did.
Some of those plants were huge too.Zucchini are expert hiders. I try to just grow the yellow or green striped ones just for that reason.Not exactly sure how we missed this zucchini until today
Did the watering this morning but I'll wait to do more tomato trimming and tying, it's too warm out in the direct sun. I'll cut back the comfrey and borage for plant compost tea when it's a little cooler. I'll need to cut back the yellow yarrow since that stuff is enormous, it must be 5 feet at least and it's blocking too much sun from the tomatoes.
As far as my companion planting has gone this year, the standouts are still the borage and comfrey, they bring in clouds of bees and are excellent for green tea compost. The yarrow has brought in lots of other beneficial insects as well as pollinators, but it does try to take over the beds. Easy to keep under control so that isn't too much of a problem and I'll keep them. I think the marigolds are a help with slugs and snails since the little buggers prefer marigolds to the tomatoes. Honorable mention goes to the trailing verbena, not sure it does anything useful but it looks so pretty trailing over the edge of the raised bed and only seems to need pruning spent flowers off to bloom just about continuously. Oh and attracts butterflies.
Oh and I hopefully dodged a bullet this morning, Queenie was limping and once I caught her I saw that her leg band was too tight so I clipped it off. No broken skin and she seemed to move better right away. I felt terrible for assuming those bands were more expandable that they are. I caught the other 2 big girls with them and cut them off as well. One was still quite loose but the other was getting tight. Next trip into town and I'll get the next bigger size and be more cautious in the future.
