Increasing Food Production/Garden Project for Resiliency

Increasing Food Production/Garden Project for Resiliency-

I found over the years that gardening is definitely a learning experience. With spring around the corner, and some temperatures in the 60's, we're looking ahead. Last fall I started thinking with the state of the world. I felt we really needed to increase our food production on our Little Homestead. Because we have a really large maple tree in our backyard we have very limited sunlight. When we first bought the house we laid out the back yard garden logically because that's where the sun was. Later we put up the coop which fit in that area well-

Sunroom will come down next month

Last fall I was looking critically at how, and why, we use the space we have. I love having the chickens in the garden because they pull the weeds and eat the bugs, but you do have to protect your plants. Protecting the plants eats up space and requires monitoring-

lots of useable space!

more protection

I finally came to the conclusion what we needed to do was extend the run that goes along our fence line further down about another eight or ten feet-

current run in the shade area

During planting season we will cut off the coop access to the main garden. We will close the main door and they can use the sunroom entrance. We can plant more intensively and the chickens would have a larger run to hang out in. I can do some supervised free-ranging in the garden. Late in the fall when we put the garden to bed we can open up that area again to the chickens. They will have lots of space over the winter and into spring. We need to feed ourselves more as a priority. Dave and I went out in the fall and bought another set of panels to match the existing ones we added last year-

With the matching panels it will look nice and fit in with the landscaping. Here's the extension area we will use-

you can see the arrows

This will create a longer run in a dead space, the hens can rototill the area, has more nice shade in the summer and the rest of the garden will be more protected. All in all I think it's a good compromise! We will also have the south side of our maple tree trimmed back soon. It's expensive but you need a pro with a huge bucket truck-

Tree hanging over garden

The trimming will remove some of the branches to open up more light, but still give shade to the coop. I will schedule when I'm home to supervise. Looking forward to gardening season!!!!