Every year I grow a garden for my chickens, but it didn't start out that way! Let me explain. I learned a long time ago that when I plant my garden every year I need to plant what we will eat, not just what I want to grow. It sounds so logical, but all those pretty plants and seed packets tend to suck me in and next thing I know I have things planted that look great and grow great but I just can't use them all! Luckily I can feed any garden extras to the chickens and they absolutely love fresh fruits and veggies.
It started out quite by accident. I had way overplanted a certain vegetable. So, the first garden plant that went to the chickens was kohlrabi. Yes, it actually is good and we do like it, but we cant eat more than a little bit so when I bought a few packs of 4 seedlings it was way too many. Especially since they were all the same age and therefore all ready for harvest at the same time. It's just so much kohlrabi! (read the summer of kohlrabi story here) Same with pumpkins, hot peppers and a few other things that tend to be ready to harvest all at once.
Gardening for chickens
Some of these vegetables I can pass on to the chickens which is great for cutting the feed bill. I talk about that in the post Free Feed: Garden Rejects.
I also grow many plants just for the chickens. Some of it we don't use
like Amaranth (though we could eat the leaves). Others are just an
overabundance of something we like. Here are a list of easy to grow,
high producing crops that I grow just for the chickens...
It seems like all I do anymore is clean these coops! The rain has been making mud everywhere and of course there's the constant supply of fresh poop that needs scraped and composted. No matter how I try I just can't keep myself as clean as I'd like to and when it comes time to wash up, I need a heavy scrub to get my hands super clean!
Luckily I scored a great sale on a new product: Palmolive 'Soft on Hands' with Vitamin E dish liquid. Sounds perfect for making a hand scrub, right? Add Vitamin E fortified soap to a sugar scrub and it's a recipe for squeaky clean hands! Hand scrubs are one of the easiest body care products to make at home. This is the easiest recipe of them all. It uses nothing but sugar and soap, plus a cute little jar!
