Low-Tech Chicken-Powered Garden Abundance!
My garden is built around chickens. I depend on their help in preparing the garden site, improving fertility, and adding organic matter to the soil. Most days the chickens range free, but they always have access to a secure run that is located inside the garden and attached to their house. Filled with straw, leaves and wood mulch, this chicken scratching yard is actually a mulch factory, which the hens relentlessly scratch and peck, while adding their own inputs of manure and feathers. I encourage scratching by throwing their treats, such as sunflower seeds or corn, into the mulch material. We're often cautioned against using chicken manure in the garden because it is so high in nitrogen that it can burn plants, and because it can carry disease. But many gardeners have found, as I have, that if you use plenty of high carbon mulch and allow time for composting, chicken manure is really great for the garden.
Garden Fertility Rotation - Actually, there are two chicken run areas attached to my chicken coop, but at any given time the chickens have access to only one. During year one, they were in the west side run, while I built the east side run. In year two the chickens moved over to the east side run and I started a garden in the west side run. (I moved the chickens in the fall so the area had several months to mellow before spring planting.) The runs are built both to protect the chickens from predators and the spring garden from rabbits and deer. So far this has been a great way to add fertility and organic matter to the garden and to keep the peas and greens safe from marauding mammals!
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In the image above, the hens are busily scratching and fertilizing the eastern run. In the the image below, they have been moved out, and the eastern run has been prepped for spring planting, though that won't be for at least 3 months.
Water Management - My current garden site has clay soil, poor drainage, and a slight slope. We're in a humid continental climate, and after a heavy rain, there can be puddles and standing water for the entire next day.
So I run my pathways across the slope, dig them out, and add the extra soil to the planting areas, forming a network of slightly raised beds and sunken pathways/swales. Then I fill the paths with wood mulch. These paths are both channels and reservoirs for excess rainfall. The wood mulch holds water and minimizes mud. In the image to the right, you can see the darker center wood mulch pathway, surrounded by lighter colored future planting beds, covered in chicken- |
processed straw and leaves. Now, when it floods, the plants don't drown and I can still walk in the garden! But for all our abundant rainfall, we are also subject to periods of drought. Some plants (like cucumbers) won't thrive without regular watering, so I use clay pots to help me out. The first step is to plug up the drainage hole using non-toxic adhesive
putty. Then I bury the clay pot and plant the water-loving plants in the soil nearby. Several plants can be clustered around a single pot so that their anticipated root zone will include the clay pot. After I fill the pot with water, I cover it. The water slowly seeps out through the unglazed clay, providing slow-release, subsurface irrigation. I use pots that hold about a quart of water and during the driest times of the year, if the plants are in full growth, I might fill up the pots as often as twice a week, and my plants are very happy. This technique is borrowed from the Indians of the American Southwest, who used clay pots or ollas to irrigate their crops. Combined with chicken-powered mulch, this technique has done a lot to keep my plants (and resident bunny )happy.
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Garden Layout - Many people run their garden beds east to west because they want to maximize sun exposure and minimize shading. But because I let water management dictate my layout and I am on a slight eastern slope, most of my
beds run north to south. The beds are 2, 3, or 4 feet wide, so that I can easily plant according to the square foot gardening method and so that I can reach the middles of the beds without stepping on them.
The exception to the north-south arrangement, is, of course, the cold frames. They have to be oriented toward the south to catch whatever winter sun they can. My cold frames are based on the ideas Elliot Coleman lays out in his book, Four-Season Harvest. Those elements provide the basis of my garden, but I'm always wanting to do more. This spring I am hoping to use my cold frames to start transplants early, and also inoculate the mulch with mushroom spawn, and trial a |
few new varieties of vegetables, and-- well, the list goes on. If you want to see more pictures of the chicken-powered garden as it progresses, click on over to the ChickenGarden Gallery.