Great Informative Book on How to Combine Chickens and Gardens on Your Urban Homestead

Talked with hubby Steve in Prescott yesterday.  He said the Rhode Island Red hen, Lucy, is loving her daily free-range time in the front garden on South Cortez Street.  He WAS wondering why our pink-blooming flox groundcover along the front path seemed so sparse this spring.  Then he caught Lucy happily devouring the flower buds. 

A timely challenge as I had just checked out this book from the Homer, Alaska, public library.  Seems like alot of things you read about keeping chickens these days are so general -- "it's fun to keep chickens."  This is the kind of book where the photos give you ideas -- "Oooh, THAT's what I could do with the side fence" and I've started reading with a pencil and notebook...tomato leaves are toxic to chickens, along with sweet peas...I already knew to not feed potatoes, especially the green parts.  Those go in the compost bin to feed the red worm, Bob and his hundreds of friends.

This is definitely a Northwest garden book and it'll be fun to see how it translates to the high country of the Southwest.  Right off-hand, I think we would need to address the issue of protective coverage from predators in a different way...my garden is much more open that the jumble of plants I had for 20 years in the Willamette Valley, Oregon.  Even though we live just over a block from the Courthouse Square in downtown Prescott, we get visited by javelina, hawks and the occasional coyote.  I make sure I have a recycled door as a shallow lean-to that the hen can dart under.


Free-Range Chicken Gardens - How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard by Jessie Bloom