Smart Feeder - Light sensor values

[Chortle Chook]

On my thread I hate my chickens about how they decimated my irises in the spring, I said that I'd keep you all up to date with whether or not my plans to thwart the scratchers and munchers, while still giving them total FR, worked. I've gone in for container gardening in amongst groups of plants that chickens don't seem to like (namely rosemary, lillies, hemerocalis, Japanese anemonies, shasta and michaelmas daisies and various shrubs ). My containers are either tall pots or pots raised up on other pots (and in one case an old chimney pot) to keep my precious flowers out of chicken reach. So far so good - I hope this gives any of you who are garden lovers some ideas for your patch

 

Here is what I mean:

Container on the old chimney

 

and tall pots

 

Here are the irises I rescued which are now in a shallow pot on top of another upturned pot:

 

This is the overall garden

 

And here is Doodle enjoying the stumpery. I got some logs from the nearby building site and put them under my wee apple tree where nothing will grow. It's now their favourite area.

[Duncan08]

Looks like Chicken heaven

[Jenthelibrarian]

Your garden looks gorgeous!

 

You have my sympathy though. I was planting out my precious dwarf French beans, not many germinated in our grotty 'spring' weather, and thinking to myself how lovely is was to have my chooks happily scritching about and keeping me company.

 

Looked round to see that Miss Mathilda Pepperpot was going along the row of pots of seedlings neatly nipping off all the top shoots, eating some and happily slinging the rest over her shoulder

 

All the veggies now netted, not very pretty but keeps off those greedy beaks.

 

Yes, I am glaring at you, Tilly

[Leeloo]

Looks nice! Glad you found a solution! I have some pots that need to be filled. I just need to go buy some potting soil.

[jackian]

I have hanging baskets and pots on the side of fences...The only thing I have that has survived are shrubs , but not at chicken level , only the bits above. ..Oh well that's one way of pruning and a lovely bay tree in a huge pot has survived .

[Duncan08]

I have been trying different things in the outdoor run to try and pretty it up a bit.

 

The apple tree is doing well, it is planted inside a chicken wire circle and they have dug out all around the circle so it is standing proud now

I have a black bamboo to plant and will do the same thing until it is established.

Tried an Aloe Vera thinking they wouldn't like that. I am not actually sure that they did, but they still pecked at it and the leaves go brown when the outer skin is broken.

 

I have some citrus planted in pots that I am going to try, keeping them in the pots, just digging them in a little so they don't fall over.

Tried putting some concrete animals in, but that scared them half to death so had to take them out.

[Margaret]

Oh Catherine,

It looks looks beautiful, well down to you both.

Have the ducks settled in and not trashed anything then?

[Chortle Chook]

Many thanks everyone for your kind words . . . they'll keep me and OH going for weeks

 

Duncan08 I do recommend black bamboo for use with chooks. I have one and the chickens do all the stripping at the bottom to show the nice black stems. It works a treat! Here it is with my wee cockerel. The plant is only about 3 years old I put the stones at the bottom when I first put it in to stop the chickens from digging it up.

 

Margaret, the wee call ducks are the cutest creatures and have settled in very well, free ranging with the chooks. Here they are on their bath.

I'd really recommend them as no trouble pets, though we do sometimes have to be stern with one of our chickens who tries to separate them and then chase one on its own.

Do please let me know how Lily and Daisy are getting on.

By the way, the lovely standard lavender you gave me is just about to flower. We kept it well out of harm's way on the patio . . . and we drank the champers for the Jubilee with my 90 year old aunt who then promptly slept for the rest of the day )

[Luvachicken]

I think your garden would do well as a Chelsea entrant.

I love it.

And I like your ducks too with their little ramp.

[Cheeky Chooky]

Oh Catherine it all looks so beautifully kept...even the duck area! and all of your feathered friends are just scrumptious

[Chortle Chook]

Oh Catherine it all looks so beautifully kept...even the duck area! and all of your feathered friends are just scrumptious

Many thanks I have a thing for flowers and crittres and OH has a thing for cleaning and anti bits / stains (he has OCD). I reckon that my chickens, ducks and dogs are good therapy for him as he has to learn to live with a few bits of mess

[Plum]

Like your idea of pots on pots though I think mine would just see that as a challenge It's looking great, well done.

 

I've gone down the route of giving them half the garden and sewing poultry pasture seed for them. The flowers are provided by I big red metal bunch on the fence and blue and white tiles on the fence posts and shells and blue glass discs on the risers on the steps out of their area. I have some hanging baskets down there as well. Shall I plant them with grapes

 

I have got a pretty flowering blue bush they haven't touched and the catmint is surviving

[LottyJ1]

Your garden is beautiful!

And so are your chooks - love the bamboo gotta get some.

 

[chick wiggle]

Your garden looks stunning, well done on keeping it so nice. The ducks are beyond cute! are they very noisy?

Ive found another plant the chickens (so far, touch wood!) have ignored. We have a Peony growing inside their fr area, as the shoots began to grow through they totally ignored it and now the buds are just about to flower

[Duncan08]

Thanks for the Bamboo picture, it looks great with the stones, much better than the chicken wire I as planning to start it off with

 

I do love your little call ducks. But I Have No More Room

 

My dad has built a stand for the wooden chick coop, we put it together last night, he thinks it will make a lovely rabbit hutch He used to have a couple of house rabbits and loved them to bits so I might get that pinched!

[amys garden]

Wowee Chubby-chook your garden is wonderfull !

What a lovely space to spend time in!

How about opening for NGS?

I allways thought those coop/garden tours they have in the USA are fantastic

We just had open gardens in our town this weekend it was so much fun and there were some beautiful spaces to see...

[Chortle Chook]

amys-garden, I love going round other people's open gardens and did once give it a thought especially as my village did an open garden thingy to raise money for the local school. It was not as posh as NGS events and weeds were allowed. Someone who opened their garden did have hens too in a super design where the whole edge of the garden right the way round was given up to their hybrids. My garden, however, is so wee that I think there would have been nowhere for anyone to stand. Guests would just have to have been ushered in one gate and straight out the next. Besides they might have trodden on all my wild-life as there are rather a lot of them

 

Plum your chicken arrangements sound just stunning. Any pictures?

Chickwiggle - I've also found that cat mint and peonies are being ignored by my chickens and I have two of each. As soon as I find anything that gets ignored I plant a few of them . . . but then the horrors run out of A grade edibles and start on the items that clearly come lower down in their list. I'm really holding out hope that hemarocalis and michaelmas daisies are at the very bottom of their nasty little lists

 

Call ducks, by the way, don't seem to do any dammage at all and I haven't found them at all noisy but then I just have one girl (at the mo ) and I've been told it is only the girls that make the noise. My wee drake makes no noise at all. Anyone wanting wee duckies and wanting to keep a silence law, could have several call duck boys together and no girls. Girls are not really needed as they are no good for eggs anyway. Looking and being cute is all they do

[cluckingmad]

Looks amazing! Our chooks are also garden-wreckers, which is unfortunate as I'm a gardener to the bone Our solution was to erect a chicken mesh barrier to protect the veg/fruit but it just looked really ugly, this year we used bamboo edging to create new "beds" and filled with gravel, then popped potted plants like bamboo on top of the gravel - made the chickens run area much prettier and the girls don't tend to bother going over the gravel (don't think they find it very comfy on the feet!)... We've given them exclusive rights to almost half of the garden, lovinging enclosed with omlet netting The girls seem to leave azaleas and our bamboo alone, although the ceanothus bush is fair game

[Chortle Chook]

Sounds lovely cluckingmad. Any pictures? (hint hint )

[abwsco]

Catherine, I'm always so green with envy when you post picture of your garden as it is gorgeous.

 

How have you looked after your black bamboo? I have two stalks of it in my chicken area. I say stalks as they are pitiful. One has no leaves on it at all so think it might be dead and the other one doesn't look much better. Mine are about three years old as well.

[Chortle Chook]

Catherine, I'm always so green with envy when you post picture of your garden as it is gorgeous.

 

How have you looked after your black bamboo? I have two stalks of it in my chicken area. I say stalks as they are pitiful. One has no leaves on it at all so think it might be dead and the other one doesn't look much better. Mine are about three years old as well.

Thanks Ann.

For the bamboo I have found that they like quite a bit of water so I empty the glug onto it most evenings. Also the stones at the bottom are pretty crucial to stop the chickens digging at the roots. Other than that I can't say I have done much. I'm hoping that as it gets older its stems will get thicker but they just seem to get more of them I've made the most of the building site that is round here (they are constructing a vast housing estate of very posh houses ) to get the stones and the stumps for the chickens. I think the builders have come to the conclusion that I am totally bonkers

[abwsco]

Thanks Catherine the lack of water is where we've probably gone wrong then plus the chickens digging at the roots Will try and remember to take more care of them and hopefully they'll come on.

[Faye&Ant]

What a beautiful garden x

[superkitty]

Lovely garden!