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blueandwhite

My bit of garden

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This is one bit of garden not sacrificed to the chooks. I've got plants on old mini greenhouse shelving, used a cake stand to grow herbs and have my fern on a pair of steps I got from the auction. I didn't even have to paint them. I've also found that in the 5 years I've had my girls they haven't eaten the following: bamboo, olive and bay tree and only sometimes had a go at the hydrangea. Here they are eating the grass through the netting, I haven't mown it once this year ... marvellous!

 

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Good luck! I have left a tray of violas on top of a wheelie bin......next morning violas on the ground and not a trace of the white polystyrene tray they were in! They kid you on they are not noticing anything diff with the the 'we are only dumb pea brained chickens' look........do not be fooled! Lol. Soon as I turn my back......things get chinenated! Or chicken-ate-it!!!

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My poor husband landscaped our garden two years ago. I mean really landscaped it, with diggers, building walls and different levels, returfing and goodness knows what else.

 

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Anyway, it looks quite nice now, but I can see husband flinching every time one of the girls starts scratching at his perfect lawn lol. We had a problem with chaffer grubs last year (should've got the girls then!) and there are a couple of bald patches that are just starting to recover that the girls are particularly interested in :-D

 

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My hens are ex batts, so I don’t know if it’s just because they are inquisitive about everything because they’ve not seen it before, but I’ve seen them having a go at the bamboo we’ve got around two sides of the garden (It’s quite long and bushy now and they also like disappearing under it when it’s bedtime :-/ ). I’ve not seen them attack the bay trees yet, but Nugget particularly seems to be attracted to the Virginia creeper. I couldn’t get her away from it last night! One of them has also trashed my lovely, healthy looking melon plant that I grew from seed from plonking her fat backside straight down on it and snapping the stem. Um, anyone want any chickens lol? They are really well behaved, honest! ;-)

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I think I'm very, very lucky with my chickens. They show absolutely no interest in eating any plants, even if I put kale in their run they only eat a bit. I would have expected them to eat more, especially the failed seedlings. They pop their heads over the rim of the pot and then toddle off. They're passionate for anything seedy and pull all the flowers/seeds off of grass.

I have trained them a bit with my neon rockpool net but I don't think they are really that bright. If they go anywhere naughty I say " come on, you know the rules", and apparently they do.

I've got tiny tomatoes and courgettes that they just ignore.

They are little bantams but I don't have enough experience to know if size matters.

 

That was some major landscaping.

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Hi mullethunter. Yes I have netting over all my grass; pegged down and I don't lift it off now. The girls just trim the grass but can't dig it up. I got it from a garden centre I think it is pond netting. It's black and the squares are about 1cm. It doesn't look great but when I didn't have it I had no grass left!

 

My girls loved the virginia creeper in my last house too and destroyed the veggie patch whatever structures I built to keep them out!

 

Happy gardening.

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Never thought of netting on the grass! Good idea. I have horrible clumps of chicken wire here and there in the hope that the grass will grow back here and there?

 

And that pic with the digger.....I have digger arriving tomorrow to rip up the driveway and wondering how the girls will cope..... :?

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Thanks blueandwhite. We only have about 3m x 4m of grass and I'm happy for them to eat it but don't really want it dug up! Just put down some grass protection mesh on most of it - looks pretty awful at the moment but hopefully the grass'll grow up through it to hide it. As you say, even if it doesn't it's better than no grass!

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We put netting down over our whole lawn last year in a last ditch attempt to save it.

 

its worked an absolute treat! This year, the grass has grown through the netting and we've even been able to mow the lawn as the netting has slowly been pushed further down towards the roots. When the girls do scratch now, they can't do any real damage as they can't get to the roots, so the grass quickly recovers.

 

We can't see the netting at all now and have a lovely green lush lawn that looks better than our neighbours :lol:

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