Keeping chickens and animals with your garden

I'm a solo homesteader at the moment. Hanno flew to Sydney yesterday to help my sister out with her house (a tree fell on it) so blogging might be a bit sporadic at the moment, but I'll do my best. When I got back from the airport and a visit to Shane and Sarndra in their new home, I took my camera into the backyard when I let the chooks out to free range. Naturally, I took photos of them scrambling for the bread I gave them, but I wanted to show you our fenced garden. I'm sure you often notice the fences in my photos but I rarely write about them, even though they a vital part of our backyard.

The brown top on the fence above is the plastic addition that stopped Shane's chook getting into the vegetable garden. It's just a strip of gutter guard.

We have an acre of land here and it's fenced off into different sections according to its use and what we want to keep in or out. There is a fence around the entire acre that keeps the dog in and neighbourhood kids and dogs out. We have water in our garden so it's important to keep those children out of harm's way. Just outside the back door, we have our first fenced area - that is to keep the dog away from the free ranging chooks, and the chooks away from the back door. It's also very good when we eat outside to be able to put the dog on the other side of the fence. Right next to that area is our fenced vegetable garden, and next to that, the fenced chook pen. The chooks are let out into the main garden to free range and the fenced back yard stops them wandering into the front yard. The fences need to be about 155 cm or 5 feet in height. Chooks can fly, although the heavier breeds only attempt it when they're young of if they're being chased. We had to add a plastic top to our garden fence because when Shane's chooks came to live with us, they flew into the garden. Adding that extra 6 inches stopped them.

This photo shows the fenced areas - on the left is the chook pen, next to that the vegie garden, next to that, on the far right, the area outside the back door. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

So to answer Karyn's question from the First Vegetable Garden post, we only let the chooks in our vegetable garden when it's between seasons and we want them in there to help clean out the insects, bug eggs, weeds and seeds. When our chooks free range, they go into the main back yard where there are fruit trees and vines growing, but no vegetables. Chickens will scratch on any bare ground they find and if that bare ground is around plants, that's your problem, not theirs. Mulching won't stop them, the next best thing to scratching bare ground, its to scratch mulch out of the way. The problem with this is that it will damage the fragile roots of the vegetables and sometimes even uproot the plants. They will also peck on growing green leaves, tomatoes, strawberries and anything else you usually feed them.

This is the main backyard where the chooks free range during the day.

The solution is to fence off the areas you don't want them in, or fence them in - with a chook tractor. When you set up your vegetable garden, you'll have to think carefully about how such a garden will work with what you already have. For instance, if you have cats, they will probably use the garden for a toilet - you'll either have to sit in the bushes with the hose and hose them every time they come near it, or you have to physically exclude them with a cage. Luckily our cat doesn't use our vegetable garden as her toilet but she does use the front yard. We had to modify gardens where we let the chooks free range. Hanno has placed chicken wire (there is a reason they name it chicken wire) over the top of the soil where the grapes are planted and where the luffas were. He's also put up wire barriers around the base of the bananas. You can't see them but they're there and that barrier enables us to continue growing bananas with chook free ranging near them. You can't expect your animals and chooks to think of a garden in the same way as we do, so before you put in a garden, think about your pets and small children, and you might have to put up fences to make the garden area work productively.

Choose your chooks wisely. These two - Lucy (the mother of Shane's chooks) and Cocobelle are about the same age yet look at the difference in size. Cocobelle (Australorp) never flies, Lucy (Old English Game) always will. Soon after they came to live with us, Lucy went to live in the rain forest. She returned after a week but she can still fly over the back fence. Luckily she has come to know our yard as home now so although she still goes out when she wants to, she comes back every night.

Jaz, I think your soil is over fertilised. Nitrogen in the soil in the form of manure, blood and bone, comfrey or any commercial fertiliser will help the green part of a plant to grow well and the root will just support the lush growth instead of developing. Radishes and carrots like a bit of compost in the soil, but nothing else. And don't give them any additional feeds like you would with cabbages, spinach or lettuce. You want the root to grow, not the greenery. When you plant your radishes again, mix them in with some carrot seeds and sand. Sprinkle them along the line and water in with a fine mist spray. The sand will show where you planted, the radishes will grow faster than the carrots, and closer to the top of the soil, so when you harvest the radishes, you'll free up space for the carrots. A few weeks later you'll have your carrots as a second crop from the one spot.

Julia, to answer your question about needing fungicides, it depends on where you live. If you're in a humid climate, like we are, you'll need to do some reading and your own research on fungicides. Fungus in a humid climate will kill your crops or stop them fruiting. We use them as a preventative here, and you might need to do the same. We use a small application of copper oxychloride on our avocado trees to help prevent Phytophthora. We apply Bordeaux mix to our pumpkins, squash and cucumbers to help prevent powdery mildew. It is impossible to grow pumpkins here without fungicide. A more gentle solution that may work for you, but didn't for us, is to spray a mix of one part milk to nine parts water on every surface of the problem plants, and repeat that every two weeks. It is good gardening practice to spray with seaweed concentrate every two weeks and to keep the garden clean, nipping off any diseased leaves; this will help with fungal and other diseases in the garden.

This is the side of our house where the front and back yards are divided off by a gated fence. Hanno's shed is on the right.

Here is a good chart about organic sprays and treatments and the Green Harvest page on all purpose sprays. We use Dipel, soap spray (made with my homemade soap), Bordeaux mix, wettable sulfur, Eco oil, tomato dust and copper oxychloride. They are all organic. Here is more information from Green Harvest about fungal diseases.

Growing your own vegetables is much more than just putting a plant into soil, there are a lot of other factors that come into it. To be a successful gardener you'll have to work with the conditions presented in your own backyard and with the children, pets, working animals and chickens you already have. Gardens, like every other living thing, will change as they grow and if you are to get the best from whatever space you have, you'll have to think about your unique circumstances and modify them to suit your needs.

PS: I'll team up the mentors with the garden novices over the weekend.