This is officially the weirdest garden year ever. Last night as I was walking through the gardens to see how everything was doing, I noticed the chickens ate my tomatoes. Every one of them. Besides the plants in the boys’ gardens, we are tomato-less.

A couple weeks ago I decided to use the chickens to do the hard work in the garden, particularly in an area I didn’t plant this year. I intended to put pumpkins there, but never got around to it, and the whole patch went to weeds. So I fenced off the space, dragged in the dog house to give them some shelter, and moved three of the hens to the area. Next I spread straw, and will keep adding more to create a deep bedding to smother out weeds and provide compost for that area if I leave the birds there long enough.

They’ve been doing a really good job inside the fence, but for some reason they decided to hop the boundary and head into the tomatoes. Obviously, the Borghese tomatoes were too hard to resist. They picked the plants clean. I guess I’ll just stretch the fence around to include what’s left of the plants, so they can at least do me a favor and clean up the entire area. My reward for feeding them such excellent produce.

Chickens in the garden

I’m not furious with the chickens. Instead, I’m hopeful this project—that lets them eat the weeds and turn up the soil—will end up making the area more productive, with less weeds.

A few weeks ago I interviewed Justin at Abundant Permaculture. He told me how well they do at this particular task. He went as far as saying that even if his chickens didn’t give him eggs, he’d have them do the work they do in the garden. That is a powerful statement that caught my attention, particularly since our hens have stopped laying at the moment. I was happy to find them something to do.

One concept is if you have a deep (at least 8 inches) layer of litter, chickens will basically make compost in place—their high nitrogen manure combines with the high carbon straw.

Chickens as pest control

Besides digging up the weeds and the soil while putting down excellent fertilizer, I know the chickens also are feasting on earwigs and any other insect that comes past their hungry beaks.

Since they’ve devoured the only real crop in that area, I’ll just leave the chickens there as long as the weather permits. Hopefully after another month or so the area will be in good shape to plant raspberry and other perennial fruit bearing shrubs. And next spring I have plans for some other parts of the gardens that got away from me this year, particularly since they’re teaming with earwigs.

That will make the chickens very happy, and will save a lot of work on my end. Who knows, maybe I’ll have to increase the flock just to keep up with my garden projects. But if I do, I’m definitely going to plant the tomatoes far out of their reach.