Chickens are a domestic animal suited to a back garden. Keeping chickens is rewarding - they provide fresh tasty eggs, and entertainment especially for children.

Safe housing for your chickens

There are a number of aspects you need to consider before deciding to keep chickens. Fencing and housing needs to be well designed to prevent predators from getting in. Please don’t underestimate the abilities of predators - losing all your flock can be very distressing. Predators in Australia include foxes, dogs, snakes and quolls. Boundary fences are not  predator proof, as foxes are good climbers and jumpers and can dig under them. All effective predator-proof fences are electrified, so in a suburban backyard the alternatives are to completely enclose a run; keep a dog capable of protecting his territory and the chickens; or only let the chickens out when somebody is home to keep an eye on them, as predators may attack during the day.

Fence designs for a chicken enclosure for rural properties are available at  http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/publications/pubs/catalogue.pdf.

Build your coop strongly - don’t use staples, and screws are preferable to nails. Chicken wire keeps chickens in but does not keep predators out, so you will need heavier gauge 12-24mm mesh, welded rather than woven.

To prevent predators digging under the coop, use a concrete floor or lay a 30-45mm mesh apron pegged to the ground and attached to the coop, or raise the coop 1.5m off the ground. For portable pens, use a strong mesh floor.

Chickens need to be locked in their coop every night so you need to get someone to do this for you when you are not around.

Chicken tractors

If you are now thinking that having free ranging chickens isn’t possible, consider a portable pen that can be moved around the lawn. The advantages of a portable pen are that it avoids the bare soil that results from a permanent pen and also prevents the build up of parasitic worms. The portable pen can be put on the vegetable garden when a crop is finished to clean up pests and weeds, and provide manure for the next crop. This method is called a chicken tractor. However, chickens do need enough room to exercise, take a dust bath, forage for greens, insects and so, so please don’t keep them in a small pen like battery farmed caged hens. Many different coop plans and more information is available at www.backyardchickens.com.

Council regulations

Check your local government regulations around keeping chickens. Roosters are not allowed in residential zones. There will be minimum distances from the coop to a boundary fence or food preparation area.  And be considerate of your neighbours.

Once you have built a safe home for your chickens you can look forward to the best tasting fresh eggs, and you will have little helpers for weeding, fertilising and pest control in your garden.

This delicious receipe comes  to us thanks to  Aimee Tinker of Beckenham, UK. Aimee cheffed at Acorn House Restaurant in London - a pioneering environmentally sustainable restaurant which composts or recycles 100% of waste and sources only sustainably farmed and harvested food. Restaurants are often extremely wasteful of resources - so let’s cook at home! On the menu today is a gourmet salad.

Roasted Pumpkin and Feta Cheese Salad

1 whole pumpkin

1 head of garlic

8-10 baby shallots

2-3 bay leaves

2 fresh red chilis (de-seeded)

Olive oil

150g feta cheese

Pumpkin seeds (This dish can be served with a number toppings, such as sunflower seeds, peanuts and pinenuts. Interchange them depending on your preference but remember to toast them to release the full flavour.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°c.

2. Chop the pumpkin into eighths and remove the seeds. Peel the tough outer skin from the flesh. (It is easier to peel your pumpkin if you chop it up into more manageable chunks.)

3. Slice the eighths into smaller pieces to make crescent shaped slices.

4. Heat some oil in a flat bottomed frying pan and add the pumpkin. You just want to brown the pumpkin slightly on each, not cook it through. Remove from the heat and place in a bowl.

5. Break up the head of garlic and crush each clove with the back of a knife to release the flavour. Add to the pumpkin pieces.

6. Peel the shallots, keeping them whole, and place them in with the pumpkin.

7. Coat with olive oil, salt and pepper and then transfer to a baking tray. Add the bay leaves and roast in the oven at 180°c for around 30-40 mins.  The pumpkin, garlic and shallots should be just tender.

8. Meanwhile, make the chili oil for dressing the salad. De-seed the chilis, cut into fine strips and then finely dice. Add to olive oil and let sit while the pumpkin is roasting.

9. In a fresh pan, dry roast the seeds or nuts until golden and set aside.

10. When the pumpkin is cooked, remove from the oven and leave to cool.

11. When cooled, place on a serving dish and top with feta cheese, nuts or seeds of your choice and drizzle the chili oil over the top. Parsley is also great chopped up and sprinkled over this dish for added colour, contrast and flavour.

Green manuring is a great way to fertilise and increase the organic matter in your soil. Green manuring is an organic soil improvement method using a crop of mixed legumes and grains. The whole plants are harvested by ploughing the young plants into the soil just before they flower, investing the soil with nitrogen, organic matter and new life force.

Legumes are plants in the bean family which have a unique association of bacteria which can extract nitrogen from the atmosphere. Grains, which are types of grasses, are also used because they produce a lot of green matter quickly which on breaking down becomes soil carbon, or humus. So what we are doing here is a method of composting in-situ which can easily be done over large areas as well as backyard garden beds.

Green manure can be sown almost anytime of year but the plants used will depend on the season and your climatic zone. For seeds and information on warm and cool season green manure planting, have a look at Greenharvest or go to a stockfeed supplier if there is one in your area.

As a Winter garden is usually smaller in terms of productive plants, Autumn is a good time to sow on unused or exhausted soil to prepare it for your next Spring planting.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Clear the area of weeds and loosen soil with a garden fork.
2. Scatter seeds at two to three times the normal cropping rate.
3. Rake in seeds to protect them from birds and drying out.
4. Water until germination occurs, and then water occasionally if conditions are dry.
5. Watch for when the plants start to flower. It is then time to turn your green manure crop in. Do not allow it to set seed, as there will be less nitrogen for your soil. If you want to keep the manure growing longer to harvest more green matter you can mow it high and allow it to grow again.
6. Chop it up by mowing or slashing.
7. Spray with biodynamic cow pat pit (manure concentrate) to assist with the breakdown.
8. Allow to wilt for a few days.
9. Incorporate into the soil by digging or shallow cultivation.

The time for breakdown varies with temperature and soil moisture, but it is usually around six weeks. Check there are no lumps of rotting vegetation before planting again.

Too much digging and back-breaking for you?

An alternative no-dig method is a green manure mulch.  Simply mow or slash the green manure and use as mulch.

We all would like to make a difference to our environmentally challenged world, so have you considered volunteering for a green project? Here are some ideas:

Volunteering opportunities abound:

You don’t have to be an expert to volunteer, you can learn on the job. The skills and knowledge you gain make volunteering very rewarding.

Here are some ways you can give support to the developing world’s green projects:

• Make a donation to a green project
• Buy organic fair trade products
• Buy a gift card for an organic garden or tree seedling from Green Gifts http://www.usefulgifts.org/ugshop/id/2618
• Sponsor an Indian farmer to learn biodynamics –contact http://www.basilacademy.in

Sometimes I have loads of things that are ripe for picking, and other times, nothing seems quite ready for harvest. My challenge is to always have things ready to come in. I say this publicly now, at the height of Summer, when I’ve got lots of good things to eat – lettuce, all kinds of herbs, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkins, beans, cucumber … let’s see how I go mid-winter. Unfortunately, I don’t eat snails.

I’ve always liked baking bread, and have tried many different methods and recipes. I think I’ve found my favourite one so far in Jim Lahey’s no knead bread. Lahey is a New York baker who makes Italian style breads, and is encouraging everyone to bake his bread at home. He has published his basic recipe on his website, sullivanstreetbakery.com. It is also available in his book My Bread, by Jim Lahey with Rick Flaste, (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2009), which also includes many other great recipes.

I use Demeter’s biodynamic bakers bread to make Lahey’s no knead rustic Italian loaf, as it is really strong … and biodynamic.

The recipe is very simple, and there’s hardly any faffing about with the dough, but a friendly warning: you need to plan ahead, as the first rise takes 18 hours. If I want to put bread on the table at 1 pm Sunday, I have to mix my dough by 2 pm Saturday.

You will also need a large heavy ovenproof pot with a lid, like a Dutch oven (or a French oven if you prefer … is there a difference?).

This is good food. You can tear it apart with your teeth like a medieval peasant, or be posh and dip it in organic extra virgin olive oil.

In Nature … all things are in mutual interaction; the one is always working on the other …

We must also observe with intelligence … the many-coloured world of insects, hovering around the plant-world during a certain season of the year. Moreover, we must learn to look with understanding at the birds.

- Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture Seven, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 2008

Organic gardens are havens for frogs, lizards, birds and insects that are struggling to survive as their natural habitat is whittled away by urban and suburban development and the use of chemical herbicides and pesticides. So while you plan and think about sustainable gardening for your household, remember to incorporate some elements that provide food, shelter and safety for local wildlife. In return, these creatures keep pests such as snails, slugs and aphids under control and maintain a natural ecological order to your garden and local area. And they are fascinating to watch as they go about their business too.

Here are some suggestions to help your garden wildlife:

• Install a pond (any size you can manage) with some water plants. This will attract frogs, lizards and dragonflies and provide a drink for birds
• Leave hollow logs or terracotta pipes in sheltered spots
• Provide a bird bath with clean water in a location where birds can fly down and back to the safety of branches (make sure there are no good pouncing positions for cats)
• If you have a cat, keep her inside especially at night and put two bells on her collar (some cats can learn to hold a bell under their chin to keep it quiet)
• Mulch provides shelter and safety for skinks
• Plant natives such as grevillea and bottle brush for bird food
• If you see a few caterpillars chomping on some leaves, find out what they are before you go squishing them – they may turn out to be beautiful butterflies in a few weeks
• Never ever feed human food to wildlife. Things like bread, sugar and biscuits are very bad for wildlife – it’s much better to provide food in the form of native plants
• And I probably don’t need to say this – don’t use chemical herbicides and pesticides in the garden. Obviously.

As our natural environment staggers under the weight of human greed, inaction and ignorance, we can strive to turn the tide by our actions, big and small. The abundance of wildlife shows that your garden is a healthy and balanced environment for all who dwell there. And that’s a good start.

You don’t have to choose one system only for your garden. There are organic systems that work in harmony, and biodynamics and permaculture do this very well. Permaculture is an Australian system that incorporates  sustainable design elements from around the world. The basis of permaculture is perennial organic gardening using varying techniques depending on climate and soils.

Permaculture and biodynamics are philosophically compatible, as they are both based on the workings of nature-integrating plant and animal systems and share an environmental ethic that aims to produce all resources onsite.  Many successful farms utilise both techniques. For example, the people at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms in the ACT make and apply the biodynamic preparations on their large permaculture designed beef and chicken properties.

Permaculture design often includes a biodynamic element - that is, the flowform. A flowform is a series of stepped basins engineered to replicate the water movement of a cascading stream as it flows into rock basins.  Flowforms oxygenate water for fishponds or oxidise pollutants in waste water treatment systems. The flowform was devised at Emmerson College, England, a college for anthroposophical and biodynamic studies.

Gardeners with a permaculture property which is completely mulched may question whether biodynamic preparations need to be applied to bare soil.  The answer is yes, ideally, so rake away the mulch before spraying. However, if that is not feasible, you can spray the preparations directly onto the plants and the water droplets will run down the stem to the ground. 500 has a radiating effect which makes it effective over a greater area than just where the droplets land, which is why we are able to use as little as 13 litres per acre.

Biodynamic gardeners might like to consider what additional tools permaculture has to offer for greater sustainability. To get you started, have a look at the following websites:

• small-farm-permaculture-and-sustainable-living.com
• permacultureprinciples.com
• permaculture.org.au

And please write in and tell us about how you combine different systems in your garden. We’d love to hear from you.

If you’re not dedicated full-time to your garden, it can be difficult to find the time to stir and apply biodynamic preparations at the right times. But Cheryl Kemp’s biodynamic potentised preparations make biodynamics very easy to use in your home garden. The traditional biodynamic preparations are potentised using homeopathic methods and are sprayed in homeopathic quantities. Just mix and spray at any time of the day. You’ll get all the benefits of biodynamics but without the stirring and storage necessary for the traditional preparations.

Complete Biodynamic Potentised Remedy

The Complete Biodynamic Potentised Remedy assists in the breakdown of organic matter and reduces loss of nutrients. It also produces high quality compost through the action of the traditional biodynamic compost preparations 502 to 507. It attracts soil bacteria and fungi that enable plants to take up minerals and nutrients. In addition to biodynamic preparations, the Complete Biodynamic Potentised Remedy includes potentised boron and sulphur, as soil throughout Australia is generally deficient in these trace minerals.

Silica Biodynamic Potentised Remedy

The Biodynamic Potentised Silica Remedy is applied as an atmospheric spray to balance atmospheric moisture, helping to prevent fungal diseases, insect infestation, snails and slugs. It also aids the ebb and flow of sap between roots and fruit, thereby strengthening plants, increasing flavour and flowering, and ripening fruit.

It really is no fuss biodynamics for the home gardener. Available in the Backyard Biodynamics shop now.

Want to get your own vegetable garden started? Here are some tips to help you plan for success:

Find a suitable site

Your patch should  be sunny and open, yet sheltered from prevailing winds, with good drainage. If your site is against a fence or wall, radiant  heat may be reflected. This can cause sun scald in warm climates but reflected heat can be used to advantage in cool climates.

Size matters

The size of your vegetable garden depends on how much time you are prepared to spend on it, and what you plan to grow. For example, a pumpkin requires 2 square metres, a lettuce 20 square centimetres. To avoid walking on the soil, the bed size should be 60-90 cm wide with paths of 30 cm.

Fencing

If you keep animals such as chooks and ducks or have herbivorous wildlife around, you will need to fence your patch with chicken wire or use row covers. Young vegetables and seedlings are mighty tasty!

Raised bed, no dig or traditional?

Raised beds are kinder to your back, and are necessary in poorly drained areas or where the soil has organochlorine contamination. This contamination has been widespread in gardens created before 1987, as now banned persistent chemicals were used to control termites around houses and fences. Raised beds are filled with clean topsoil and compost, then mulched. But watch out - the good drainage means they easily dry out.

No dig gardens eliminate digging and weeding. The method developed by Esther Deans is to create a low bed with bricks or boards, lay a thick layer of newspaper over existing lawn, cover with biscuits of lucerne hay, sprinkle with organic fertiliser, cover with 20 cm of loose straw, add another sprinkling of organic fertiliser, and then plant into 10 cm deep circles of compost.

The traditional garden at ground level has lawn removed, the soil dug over and compost added. The  soil needs continual cultivation to remove weeds instead of  using mulch to control weeds.  It will need more watering due to evaporation.

Mulch your vegetable patch

Always use mulch to increase soil carbon, improve soil structure, conserve water and reduce weeding. Mulch tends to attract snails so you will need methods to deal with them, such as beer traps (a jar half-filled with beer and set into the ground will attract and trap marauding slugs and snails).

Grow vegetables in the correct season

Trying to grow vegetables outside their natural season will only end in tears. So plan what vegetables to sow according to the season and your climate zone using our Monthly Gardening Guide. ]]> http://backyardbiodynamics.com/2009/10/starting-a-vegetable-garden/feed/