Hello All, I hope this will be a fairly long and detailed 'blog' of my Permaculture garden: Step 1: 29th November, 2013 Well, the contract :handshake: was signed on the weekend, so it looks like the house purchase has gone from 'think it will' to 'probably will' so, unless the pest and building report comes back with something altogether horrible Wendy and I will be the proud owners of little piece of Australia. The property has a westerly aspect, which will be nasty in summer, but good in winter. Fortunately, the yardspace is a bit weird shaped so the growing aspect will be northerly. In essence we have 3 yards: Front yard, which is grass (for now - probably forever to be honest. It's not what I want, but in reality it's unlikely to change). The Northerly yard (fully enclosed 'northern side' of the back yard) will become the chicken mandala growing area. It will hopefully provide us with the vast majority of our veggies. I doubt I will do a great deal in the way of fruit, but I'll take that one step at a time. The Southerly yard (fully enclosed 'southern side' of the back yard) will be our entertainment/clothes drying/relaxing space. The barrier between the Northern yard and the Southern yard will be a fairly narrow covered and enclosed deck. The idea being that if we enclose the front and back deck with some kind of screening we will be able to keep the house completely open when the weather is right and get good ventilation through the whole house. I do a lot of BBQing and the back deck will be right next to the kitchen so will work out well (just hope the wind blows northerly when I'm cooking a BBQ chicken =-). The only down side I can see to the whole design at this stage is that the block slopes from north to south, which means any greywater system I setup will be going against gravity to get to the growing area. That's probably not a HUGE issue as the bottom of the house will still be higher than the top fo the property (I think) so will just mean a slow drainage of water... which isn't altogether a bad thing. I may setup a small windmill if necessary (and I can do it) to draw water up to a small storage tank, or just catch rainwater and forego greywater altogether. I'll send 'before' photos when we actually move in (hopefully before Christmas). Any suggestions on kicking off the chicken madalas would be appreciated. I have read Linda Woodrow's book "the Permaculture Backyard Garden" and have a PDC, so I'm not completely new, but advise is always appreciated. My real main question would be... do you think I should just chuck the chickens under a dome and let them defoliate the grassed area as a first step (so let's say a month before starting to plant anything - probably setup seeds into seedling pots to start anyway - so timing might be prefect)? I'm personally for that, but would like to hear from others. Thanks all.
Just do it. Do you have you dome already made? If not, (having 5 years of using the Linda Woodrow approach) consider making a rectangular chicken tractor. Backyards aren't circles so you can get more beds in with a rectangular tractor. The romance of overlapping circles is lovely and there's probably some magic that happens only in circles, but next time I do it, I'm going for rectangles. I have a 3 m diameter dome (not the 'true' 4 m one that Linda outlines) and even with that I regularly have to step onto the bed to harvest stuff, which causes compaction of the soil. I'd work out my own personal reach - squat, draw a line in the dirt at the tip of my toes and another as far as I can comfortably reach without having to put the other hand on the ground - and use that as the width of the tractor and double that for the length. That way you can set up single reach beds (against the fence where there's access on one side only) and double reach beds (where you have access from 2 sides). Yes - just whack it onto the area you want to clear and let them at it. Tossing grain directly on the ground rather than using a feeder encourages more scratching. Once they get it down to bare ground start to chuck in chicken compost ingredients - manure, leaves, hay, shredded paper etc - whatever you can get your hands on, to build a growing medium for you to plant into. And another tip from the experienced - put the chooks on rations for a few days before you move them and stop feeding grain. Otherwise you get a green manure crop spring up from the uneaten seeds - right in the middle of where you just planted the stuff you want.
That sounds wise. Another thing that springs to mind is that if you put them on a strict diet of 'forage for yourself boys' (girls actually) they will be more 'destructive' when you put them into the next rotation of the beds that you want defoliated and dug up. I like your idea of the rectangular beds. I must admit that there is a certain aesthetic quality to the mandalas, but a triangular structure (in cross section) similar to a rabbit hutch you buy from pet stores would be easier to construct and fairly easy to move. Could even build it with handles easily enough. My initial thought was that I was going to build the beds by putting down 6 or 8 cyclone style fence posts cut off at ground level so that I'd have a 1' long pole in the ground that would be the outer support for poles that I'd put in to enclose my chickens (kind of like what a golfing green's 'hole' would be with the flag pole in it), but I think your version would be easier to manage. If I do go with the mandalas (I DO have an artistic streak) I was going to use the 'corners' to put comfrey, sunflowers and other permanent 'green manure' crops. Still, your suggestion is well taken. Looking forward to more feedback. I don't care if anything fails, except the chickens. I don't think I would feel nonchalant about a dead chicken because I've failed to look after them right. Talking of chickens, my wife has been offered 'the fluffy white ones' because a friend of hers keeps them as show chickens. I got no idea if they are any good, but they are free... so how bad can they be? If all they do is defoliate the grass they will be worth their price.
If they eat, scratch, poo and lay you're good to go when it comes to chickens. The only concern I would have is fragile ones that'll die if you look sideways at them. That's pretty upsetting. The other lesson is don't plant anything tall in the path of the dome - lifting up and over is a bugger. (There's speaks the voice of experience… It seemed like a good place for an orange tree….)
If you're talking about Silkies, my experience is that they're pretty hardy. While they are only very average layers, if you have small kids they're great cuddle value (& they're pretty good cuddle value for adult children as well)
