Garden Share Collective: Chicken Proofing the Vegie Garden

Recently I was contacted by Lizzie of Strayed From The Table about being involved in the Garden Share Collective, a monthly peek into the vegie gardens of bloggers from all over the place. Which I thought was great, and I'm delighted to be taking part. Here is my first post sharing my vegie garden - very much in need of some TLC right now!

It's winter, and despite all the best intentions of planting peas, broad beans, spinach and various other bits and pieces, I've planted... nothing. Now before the judgements commence, let me just say - 3 month old baby. The last time I did any real work in the garden was about 48 hours before he was born. So I have a reasonable excuse. The other problem I've experienced should be fairly self explanatory from the following images.

Those chickens. I blame George [the 'hen' we had named Georgette who matured into a rooster named George]. You see we do have a fence around the vegie garden, just chook wire, so it's not very high. And for a while it did keep them out. And I suspect that if we'd only had the girls, they probably wouldn't have gone in there at all. But with George roaming here there and everywhere, of course he hopped over and of course they all followed and now the whole garden is a complete mess. 

So I've been unwilling to spend time planting seeds or seedlings, knowing that it will be a futile effort with our feathered friends scratching about in there. And I've been a bit stumped as to how to keep them out. We could clip their wings, but I'd prefer not too as it renders them unable to get out of the way of predators. So this is my first attempt at solving the problem - jute webbing around the top of the fence. I'm hoping that the chooks don't try to hop on the fence, as it won't be stable enough to hold them. 

Fingers crossed it works. The plan was/is to plant some peas and spinach and see how they go. We do get frosts but I'll cover them with shade cloth overnight. I've never planted a winter vegie garden before, only summer gardens, so it's all very experimental. In any case, we do have a success story to share. The broccoli that got stripped by caterpillars in summer, is now producing lovely little heads, which I've been picking here and there. We left the plants in, more through laziness than anything, and now we're being rewarded with home grown broccoli goodness. Sometime lazy pays off.

Hopefully next month I'll be able to report complete success at keeping the chickens at bay. If you have any other suggestions to try, by all means, please tell me! And for more vegie garden love, head over to the Garden Share Collective and take a look. And here's a photo of my baby, for good measure, because he's gorgeous.

This is how we garden.