Gardens and chickens co-existing is certainly a debatable topic. There's some amount of literature out there regarding sustainable garden techniques for the homesteader using chickens in the garden as help, but when you get into reading suggestions on how this works you notice that a lot of advice centers around keeping chickens OUT of the garden with a few exceptions.

Over years of trial and error and patience, and through lots of research and discussion among fellow gardeners, homesteaders, and backyard chicken keepers, we've compiled a general guide on how to make chickens and gardens exist together happily. (See author resource box for link to full article with plant lists.)

A lot of people will recommend keeping chickens in an enclosed run, which solves all of these. There are dangers of free range chickens and risk it for the benefits. However, this article pertains to chicken keepers and garden diggers.

There are plants that will always be targets for chickens and there are plants that it will be impossible to allow chickens access to without complete disaster. Consider most anything you find edible to be on their menu. Chickens will obsessively devour these foods. Even older, experienced chickens that turn their noses up to a treat of lettuce will still eat it and scratch it to nothings, if there are plenty of bugs and worms abound.

We've compiled a list of edible plants that chickens will most likely destroy, and if you grow these with free ranging chickens, your only hope is completely barricading these plants off from chickens with good fencing. (See author resource box for link to full article with plant lists.)

Give them space, and minimal fencing works. If your chickens have access to lots of productive foraging area, they generally leave the greens alone. Plants that grow over the tops of the fences and sometimes get nipped, but chickens won't bother trying to leap a chicken wire fence if they have plenty of other things to do and eat. It's also been reported that short picket fences of about the same height have the same effect. As long as a chicken can't easily crawl under or through a gap, as long as there's lots of room to occupy their minds and their bellies they give up on barriers pretty quickly.

With the right plants, you can enjoy the benefits of the scratching and pecking! (See author resource box for link to full article with plant lists.)

There are many others, and a lot of discovering what plants your chickens will leave alone will center on a lot of trial and error. (See author resource box for link to full article with plant lists.)

Chickens and gardens are possible under careful consideration and many exceptions. We hope that this article gives you hope and a better idea of what to expect when keeping a garden and chickens together.