Our Backyard Veggies

We have been fans of permaculture gardening for quite some time. The amazing results of a few chooks in our veggie patch have been evident again this year when we planted our summer garden. Just one illustration is our cucumbers.

In one large rotational pen we raised 40 meat chickens for several months, and then planted our summer veggies after their trip to the freezer. We planted 20 cucumber plants along the fenceline where a large deposit of manure had been dumped after cleaning out the shed. We also sequentially planted a total of 400 cucumber plants in a new bed where we had not prepared the soil beyond tilling it. The aim was to supply a local veggie wholesaler with cucumbers every week.

Those first 20 cucmber plants grew over 30 kilos of cucumbers by themselves EVERY WEEK! The 400 cucmber plants in our other bed only grew 20 kilos per week for quite some time even with the addition of chemical fertilizer. The work of the chooks in preparing the ground made an incredible difference. We had MORE than seven times the yield of the unfertilzed plants from the fertilized ones. And it was great to see the lush, thriving plants growing thick and tall. They just loved life! There's absolutely nothing to beat that fresh chook manure when it comes to gardening, as the statistics by Andy Lee and Pat Foreman reveal, below.

"Chickens Add Fertilizer And Organic Matter To Soil

If you use the chicken tractor system to raise chickens in your garden you can expect soil fertiliy and organic matter content to increase in your garden beds practically overnight. This happens because the chicken is not able to convert all of its feed to either meat or eggs. Chickens excrete an average of 75% nitrogen, 80% phosphorus and 85% potassium that is in the animal feed.

A mature hen will eat about 80 to 90 pounds of feed per year and produce about 50 pounds of nutrient rich manure. A broiler will eat about 15 pounds of feed and will excrete about 10 pounds of manure over an eight week period. About 40 percent of this manure is organic matter.

Therefore, if you raise 5 hens in a 20-square-foot pen, a move the pen daily, the hens will be depositing about 250 pounds of manure per year on your garden beds. You can rotate these 5 hens from bed to bed in a 30 day cycle. That means they will spend one day on each site and not return to that site ofr 30 days.

This rotational system will cover 600 square feed, about the size of a 20 foot family garden. Thanks to the nutrients and organic matter in the chicken manure you will have fertile beds next year in which to grow your garden.

Use the deep mulch system if you don't have enough garden space to move your chickens each day. The advantage of adding mulch to the chicken tractor daily is that it will interrupt the loss of nutrients to volatilization. If you don't protect the chicken manure on the soil surface, anywhere from 30 to 90 percent of the nitrogen can be lost. Nearly 50 percent of that loss will occur in the first 24 hours. The longer the nitrogen lies exposed the greater the percentage of loss.

Another advantage to the dry hay or straw mulch is to buffer the impact of the nitrogen in the chicken manure. The carbon natture of the mulch will help lock up the nitrogen, releasing it slowly so that the following crop plants don't get an oversupply of nitrogen. Too much nitrogen in the soil can lead to excessive foliage growth in the plants. This may actually retard the yields of the plants. The carbon material helps to buffer any potential nitrogen overload.

Using Rotational Pens To Build Soil Fertility

Using poultry in a rotational grazing sequence is a good way to add fertility to your garden quickly. Each day move the portable chicken tractor to a new spot, leaving behind a residue of manure and organic matter.

As soon as I move my chicken tractor I broadcast cover crop seed, either buckwheat or winter rye, on the old site. Then I use a garden hoe to loosen the soil, about one inch deep, to cover the seeds I've just sown. Then I apply a light layer of compost, shredded leaves, dry hay or loose straw. This simple, quick technique mixes the newly deposited layer of chicken manure into the soil surface and covers the new seeds to ensure good germination.

Permaculture Gardening

One way to measure soil health and productivity is by measuring the vegetable or fruit yields. The upper potential of a healthy soil production is at leas seven times greater than the current national average. That means we can grow at least seven times more yeilds on rich, helthy soil than on poor soil.

If you use chicken tractors to improve your garden beds year after year, you can look forward to developing a fine rich soil that will eventually produce at least seven times what it is producing now. Your first year garden will grow enough food for one family, but as you make your soil richer and improve your growing techniques, you will experience a surplus of food. At that point you can begin decreasing your garden size each year, resulting in less and less work to get more and more food. Or rather than decerease the garden size as it becomes more fertile, youc an start selling the extra food to your friends and neighbours and create a market garden.

Remember, as the land receives more organic matter it will grow richer, will need less irrigation water and be more flood resistant. The soil will be able to hold more of the natural rainfall that occurs. The idea is to make your garden soil structure such that it can soak up the rainfall. Then the soil acts as the reservoir for both nutrients and moister. Mmmm, your plants will love it!"

Quotation Excerpted from: Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil.