Gardens, Chickens and Fences

Greetings all, Ken here. Margaret is not the only to spend a lot of time in the gardens. I have been making garden fences all day. What's that you say? A fence around a garden? Silly idea I should think! You would be correct in thinking that garden fence might be silly, that is until you throw chickens into the mix. Chickens love scratching, it is in fact one of their best  means of getting food. Our chickens are experts and quite fearless in their choice of locations to scratch about in.

They are equal oportunity scratchers, lawns, flower and  vegetable gardens, wood piles and just about any other place they can get their claws into. They are quite efficient at making holes in the dirt which is where the garden fences come in. Seeds are fair game and vegetable seeds are best of all because they are usually planted in freshly turned soil and so are easy to scratch up.

The garden fences keep all but the most enterprising chickens out of the vegetable gardens. I have found a cheap and easy way to make garden fences that keep the chickens out, protect the gardens from the wind, tend to make the temperature inside the fenced area a little higher (reflected heat and light) and provide extra space for climbing vegetables such as peas and beans. With a little enginuity, you can make frames along the fence to hang tomato pots from, affix chicken wire for peas and beans to grow up and more. The only limiting factors are your budget, time available a materials to hand.

This cheap and easy method of fence building involves skids. We get them from a building supply store in London called Herman's Building Supplies. They have hundreds of skids left over from shingles, bricks and other building supplies. The best part of this equation is that they are free for the taking, it costs you time and gas to get them.

The method of construction I use calls for skids that have overhanging boards on both ends of the skid. I use all the same type of skid and just overlap them, make sure they are vertical and level and nail them to either scavenged 4X4 posts or 2X4's. I dig the 4X4's into the ground 2 ft deep, make them as vertical as I can, fill and tamp the dirt around them. Before I put the 4X4's up, I coat the bottom 2 1/2 ft with roofing tar to help preserve them. The 2X4's I cut to 4 ft lengths, cut points on them and pound them into ground.

I intend to make planting boxes for the top of the skids for the peas and beans. These will be 1X4 rough pine or spruce boards, probably lined with landscape fabric and filled with earth. (Duh!) The skids I use also have slats on the bottoms of them and you could hang pots or make up smaller planting boxes for climbing plants as well.

We have built two of these fences so far, one for the West Garden and one for the Kitchen Garden. I will be building one around the East (or BIG) Garden as soon as possible. Our grand children have expressed an interest in having a garden, so we'll be making gardens for the three of them as well.

I'm hoping this year's garden season will be more successful than last year. I guess we'll know in October how it went. We'll also know how well the fences worked in keeping the chickens out of the gardens as well.

Until next time, take care and thanks
Ken