Earlier this year as winter approached, I planted some daffodils in a pot. I put a fortress of sticks around to stop my chicks from getting into the pot and using it as a dirt bath.
The fortress worked. The chicks did not manage to get through the wall of sticks, even though I am sure they tried when I wasn’t looking.
Now I am not sure whether I should take the fortress down or not. I would hate it if the girls hopped into the pot and broke my beautiful daffodils.
This is my daffodil fortress. I planted my daffodils last weekend and built this fortress to keep the chickens out. So far it has worked.
Hilda “I’ll keep watch while you eat the strawberry”.
Hilda “Oh no, I think she has seen us”.
Helen “Quick, put your head down and she might not notice us”.
Helen “Are these ones over here ripe yet?”
Hilda “No, not yet. A few more weeks.”
Hilda “There’s one over here I have been keeping my eye on.”
Helen “No, not ripe yet. We’ll check again in a few days.”
For a long time, my chickens didn’t realise there was some nice soft garden dirt to scratch in. I even wrote a post about how lucky I was. But then one of them looked up and found the garden in the tub.
And then the second one saw the first one up there and decided she would take a look as well.
And not to be out done, Hannah found the other barrel and she has it all to herself.
Unfortunately where we live, the soil is made up of heavy, orange, gluggy clay and when our house was built unfortunately it didn’t come with topsoil. So I don’t really have a garden. I have wine barrels filled with container mix and a few herbs and other edible bits and pieces. I guess you can almost call that a garden.
I also have a few pots dotted around.
I guess this is also our garden. Our house is tucked under a bush. Lots of very tall pine trees and lots of native trees in amongst.
I have read many other chicken blogs and it seems that chickens devastate gardens. So much so that many of them start off as free range chickens and then have be curtailed due to garden destruction.
My chickens seem to walk around with their heads down always looking for things to peck at and I don’t think they even know there is dirt and tasty things in my containers. I guess one day they might look up and find the coriander and blueberries.
Of course they can peck and scratch as much as they want in the bush.
