Striking the Balance of Gardening With Chickens

A Maryland gardener combines beautiful plants with happy chickens

Today ’s pictures come from Avis Vesely in Maryland , photos she took on her morning “ week and take the air ” with her four hen ! I had to inquire her more about her garden and how she manages to balance the garden and the chickens . Here ’s what she had to say :

The grandkids pluck out three or four vernal laying hen each spring from a local Amish husbandman , and in the fall when the grandkids go back to school and my husband and I begin our wintertime travel , we gift them back to the Fannie Farmer . The first twelvemonth we kept them cooped but moved the hencoop around an sphere on the boundary of the trees . Then the following year we put the coop in a permanent place and permit the biddy out when we are home .

They do n’t seem to range too much ; however , our garden is in a rural area and I have found a few way of keeping them close . The first calendar week I keep them in the henhouse and feed them and chitchat a bit . Then I let them out when I ’m garden in the kids ’ “ Secret Garden ” near the coop . It ’s a place that we are still cleaning , and there are lots of leaf and bug for them to scratch up . We purchase dried mealworms as kickshaw , and when I ’m done work I inveigle them back into the chicken coop with the mealworms .

Each day I put to work a different field near a part of the yard where I want them to be , and they come me around . They do n’t do enough garden impairment to bother me . For the last several twelvemonth I ’ve been planting a destiny of flower seeds in the gloam , and they have done a good problem thinning my lupines while they are look for bugs .

They sure as shooting do n’t bother any established perennials ; however , when I fill my terrace pots with dinero in early leap , they do relish fresh lettuce .

We buy the star sign 15 year ago as a little beach place , and then I never wanted to go back to the city . So after my married man retired , we put on a lowly addition and renovated the planetary house . The property sits on a lowly lake , which run out into the Chesapeake Bay .

We did a lot of stone hardscaping to keep erosion and have wonderful native tree diagram and shrubs here that just need some pruning and cleaning .

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