I grew up with ducks - Khaki Campbells - but this was the first time I had kept chickens. So, having wisely read a lot about chickens and how to keep them, I ignored it all and put my veg beds and my girls together. The results were predictable.
First I planted out a bed with my perennial onions, sea kale and assorted herbs. They lasted a day before the girls scratched them all up again.
So next I put up some netting fences around the beds, about three feet high. The theory was that the girls couldn't actually fly over the nets and they were too flimsy to be perched on. So then I replanted again. And this time it lasted two days.
So this time it's full enclosure and chicken wire cage defences for the salads. The fruit bushes are defended at ground level with a layer of old terracotta roof tiles. These cover the soil and act as a kind of mulch. The girls can't scratch them up, the weeds are suppressed and, as a bonus, the tiles absorb the sun's heat beautifully, providing sun bathing opportunities for the girls even when the day cools down.
And as an experiment, I'm going to try planting runner and French beans up the mesh of the chicken compound. It should make an excellent climbing frame, but to protect the beans for the first foot or so of growth, I'm sowing the beans into some old tree protection tubes I have knocking around.
So we'll see how all this works, and I'll report back in a few weeks
