I have a friend who owns a digger and he has kindly offered to help me pull up some non productive trees and tree roots so I can make a vegetable garden. I have a couple of options. 1. Create no dig garden beds or 2. Partition off a couple of areas and rotate them between growing veg and giving the chickens the run of them. I can see benefits to both systems, what do you guys think?
Definitely rotation. Use some of the mulch you would use for the alleged no dig and make a proper garden. Plants grow in soil.
raised beds, chooks can have everywhere else to scratch around, your priority would be growing veg' and not just giving chickens more play room. raised beds have many benefits, like increasing your growing time, no digging, a place to compost your scraps under mulch, let worms populate, worms are much more helpful in your dirt then in your chickens gut, they can find worms everywhere, your raised bed worms would be to feed your plants, which in turn feed you. maybe have a dirt patch that you can rotate veg' through to break the cycles and then let your chooks at that, leaving your raised beds to do their best at growing vegies for you.
Combine both.....the chooks will work the no dig bed ready to rotate....the no dig beds need a season to be really good I've found. Plan on putting the chooks over my no dig bed over winter. Hopefully thin out the slugs a bit. Cathy
go with a no dig deep mulch/sheet mulch method. At least once a year let your chickens on to each part of the garden. They will eat the larvae of insects in the soil and greatly reduce pest problems. If you divide your garden into 3 or 4 plots and always have one resting with a cover crop, then when you are ready to start using that section again knock down the cover crop and let the chickens have at it for a week or two. Unless you live in a cold climate raised beds are more trouble than they are worth. The soil dries out faster in them, they take a lot of material to fill, they cost time and money to build, and other than less bending they have little up side. (In colder climates they can allow the soil to warm faster and extend the growing season, If they are built right and have the proper orientation.)
Do both.... Clear the ground with the chickens, then give them a pile of compost making stuff to scratch in - manures, grass clippings, mushroom compost, straw etc until you have a 'deep litter' type arrangement. Move them on and whack in your plants. Have a look at the Linda Woodrow Mandala Garden style.