Chicken Run – Experiments in planting greens

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Three variations on a theme to protect the soil from constant pecking and scratching to allow weeds to grow to feed the hens later. A follow up on this experiment will happen for sure, a little down the road 🙂

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Happy growing!

it’s a beautiful
quintessentially April kind of morning
here it’s a little bit cool almost a
little warm overcast lots of rain
overnight maybe rain throughout the day
and things are a flowering got a lot of
little beautiful scenes happening all
around the daffodils are blooming they
seem to line up pretty much with the
nank King cherries and the apricots such
a lovely set of characters and fuky
underneath here catching all the petals
their flowers just wrapped up they’re
some of the earliest flowers in the
season and this will be a carpet of
beautiful huge green leaves in no time
but let me get back on track chicken
yard stuff this is what I want to work
on today a little bit is to start
figuring out incorporating more of that
verdant green beautifulness in the
compost area so folks that watch this
channel know that the majority of this
space is meant to be an active compost
turning operation we’re constantly
bringing in wood chips and sawdust and
food
scraps in the spirit of trying to
generate lots and lots of habitat for
red wigglers and sprouting that’s the
main diet of our hens is Sprouts and
worms and some compost when it first
comes in but I’d love to be able to get
them solid amounts of greens as we
renovate garden beds in the early spring
we’re pulling old plants I’m digging up
dandelions and old mustards and garlic
mustards things like that we throw them
in the space where we’re not actively
harvesting compost and you can see where
the plants if they are in contact with
the soil a little they’ll try try to
reroot and grow again all of this is
feeding the hens but for the most part
these plants are going to pass away in
here and for the most part that’s okay
but then I look at a band like this
where we’ve harvested a lot of compost
if we go much deeper it’s going to start
getting extremely Soden and wet ined
here I’d love to have this translate
into green pasture and I think there
might be a way we can do that with the
impact of the hens it would not be
possible to Simply sew seed and hope
that it would work but we’ve got some
ingredients that can facilitate this
anytime I get into a project like this
my mind goes immediately to what are the
parts and bits that we have laying
around it’s not how am I going to order
this stuff online or go to a box store
that’s fine if I need to it’s fine if
folks need to as well but what’s laying
around that might be useful I think we
have some parts that will do this I’ve
got this huge cache of old bricks that
were from a kiln I bought way back when
uh propane fired Kil so someday we’ll
build a rocket stove I think but some of
these bricks with the holes in them we
might be able to use likewise someone
with was getting rid of this whole pile
of cinder blocks so I scooped them up I
wasn’t quite sure what I’d use them for
I thought maybe to actually make a
functional set of stairs to the front of
the house but we don’t really need that
let’s do something in the chicken yard
with these instead there are these
things that I found I think for a dollar
or two at a reuse store that I’d like to
see if we can use these to help with
this project we have left over half and
minor spools of 2×4 in welded wire 4T
tall stock I think this will be our main
ingredient now instead of just talking
about all these little bits let me
actually start putting some stuff
together so I can explain first a stick
for George my friend
George he never gets tired of a stick
for
George I’ve tried to see if there’s an
upper limit to how much he’ll do this
there isn’t one the elements that will
drive this whole project are the actual
plants themselves so here I’ve dug out
some bloody dock It’s a Wonderful plant
but it’s pretty expansive and we don’t
need Unlimited amounts of it so that
would be an ingredient I think the hens
would really like and as we work through
these beds this is beautiful and green
and lovely but I’d like to have it be a
little bit more curated in actively
growing things we eat on a day-to-day so
as I dig these plants out I’m going to
leave the soil attached we’ll accumulate
them and I think we can plant them into
the chicken yard with a fencing a lofted
fencing structure over them we consider
these are transplants we’ve got bloody
Dock and beets and yellow Dock and
dandelions all extremely nourishing High
desire food crops for the hens if they
can be growing so let’s see if we can
plug them in and actually protect them
from the hens a couple of thinner cinder
blocks a shelf from an old Dollar
General or something like that that was
getting thrown away some weeds we wanted
to dig out anyway and a spot right here
where we’ve got our actual composting
system we want to keep it held we don’t
want it to dip into this side and so we
can create a little boundary space right
there and maybe grow some green for our
hands let’s see
[Music]
it’s a little slow to
dig well not that slow but slower than
I’d like for what this project is but
I’m realizing the ground is so
soppy I can
probably lay things like this Dock and
dandelion right on the mud and just step
them in and once the protection is over
them that should be good enough
especially if there’s some compost being
kicked onto them but the clock is
ticking cuz these hens will just eat
their way through this if I don’t get to
it right now quit blabbing start
planting so it’s about a 2minute 0
project to set some things in motion the
cinder blocks are for free or even if I
bought them I could repurpose them later
for sure to take this apart in under 30
seconds lots and lots of diverse plants
planted under there question marks are
do the plants survive I think they
definitely will cuz there’s really good
uh compost and moisture maybe a little
excessive but they’re Hardy plants and
then will they survive with the brows
and impact from the hens that’s the
biggest question and so we’ll let this
be I’m definitely going to do some
updates on how this all works so this is
one iteration I’d like to try some more
thought I was going to go through and
dig all or move all these into another
spot but I realized they’re about the
same width as this material so I wonder
if I can lay something out right through
here and just step the the weeds in so
they’ve got good ground contact we can
always add a little compost on top and
see if we can’t just protect them with
the fencing right over
them I realized we have a cache of these
compost dividers that we made out of
black locust a ways back these are 2T
and 4T and they’re not actively being
used right now so I think I’m going to
actively use them as the supports for
the fencing material about 5 or 10
minutes for this one using these
dividers these could be logs from the
woods they could be branches trimmed
from trees they could be old rotten
firewood they could be Stones they could
be cinder blocks they could be a million
million uh and this me uh mesh material
over top could be old chicken wire you
get the idea it could be a lot of
different things we’ll see how this
works uh visually I’m not it’s not the
most beautiful thing but there’s a lot
of stuff that on the surface is not
super beautiful in here but the concept
and how it actually functions feels
beautiful so we’ll just see what is the
difference in over the next few days or
week or so how the greens in here work
out the weeds that were thrown in in the
outside I’m sure we get kicked apart
maybe I’m not 100% sure but we’ll see
and we’ll document that as we go the
last section of fence I think what I’d
like to do is simply lay it on the
ground and pin it uh in direct ground
contact and just see what that does as
far as effect on weed seeds and seeds in
the compost germinating um that’s that’s
the lowest effort path is to Simply lay
out some sort of metal interference from
direct kicking and pin it down so it
can’t move and see what comes to that
over time so we’ve got this simple one
over here this simple one and another
simple one I’ll finish in a moment by
far the sloppiest execution of the
concept but important to see what the
outer bounds are so this is really beat
up old fence a lot of the weld points
are broken and so I just fold fold it
over the sides cut and fold it over so
it’s basically you know a little bit
lofted the chickens definitely can walk
on this and squish it down what will
happen under here if this works as well
as these other things then that’s the
way I really want to do it three
separate iterations of a proof of
concept of blocking hens temporarily
from a space so that greens can show up
or the greens that are in here weeds
that are rooted can do their thing we
might throw some sprouted seed in here
and see what that does well this one
work well will this last one the
distillation of the concept to the
absolute least ingredients will that
work okay we just went through and poed
all of the popler and Willow on the
north side of our chicken run to allow
for lower more dense uh privacy growth
to happen I was leaning towards the idea
of going through and cleaning this all
up but I realized o actually this is
another experiment as well let’s throw
some sprouted seed or some diversity of
seed we’ve got leftover kale seed in the
like what happens when that tumbles
through all of this Branch lattice work
so rather than cleaning it let’s leave
it and leverage the lack of chicken
scratching through here to see if we can
actually get a wild looking but
functional graze space through here you
know again for most folks eyes the
aesthetic this is brutal and bad but it
might actually be very functional and
that’s all that matters to me that’s it
for now in the chicken yard time to do
other things let me know what sort of
questions you have or ideas or
suggestions have you done things like
this we’ve tried different things
different iterations in the past that
worked well not so well vertical uh
setups that dry it out in the heat of
the summer this feels like a very low
embodied energy very low cost as far as
time uh way to see if we can get some
more green in here um what do you think
will it work I we’ll follow up either
way and let you know thanks for watching