Gardening with Chickens: Plans and Plants for You and Your Hens

Description

Welcome to a world where chickens and gardens coexist! Join Lisa Steele, chicken-keeper extraordinaire and founder of Fresh Eggs Daily, on a unique journey through the garden. Start by planning your garden and learning strategies and tips for keeping your plants safe while they grow. Plant with purpose, choosing from a dozen plans for theme gardens such as Orange Egg Yolks or Nesting Box Herbs. Or choose a design that's filled with edibles - sharing the bounty with your family and your feathered friends. Then comes the fun part: enjoy the harvest, even let the chickens graze! Lisa's friendly writing, together with inspirational photos and illustrations, will have you rolling up your sleeves and reaching for your gardening tools. Lisa also covers a range of topics just for chicken-keepers, including: - Chickens and composting - Using chickens to aerate and till - Coop window boxes - Plants to avoid when you have chickens - Lists of the most valuable crops and herbs - Advice on how to harvest and use many of the plants - And much more! Whether you're an experienced chicken keeper, master gardener, or just getting into these two wonderful hobbies, Gardening with Chickens is an indispensable guide for a harmonious homestead.

Lisa Steele is a fifth-generation chicken keeper who has been around chickens most of her life, so it's no surprise she has made her name raising her own backyard flock and sharing her farming adventures. Lisa is also an aspiring herbalist and avid gardener who shares tips and advice on both her award-winning Fresh Eggs Daily blog and Facebook page of the same name. She holds a Maine Master Gardener certification and her popular website has been named one of Better Homes & Gardens Top Ten Gardening Blogs. A regular contributor to such publications as Backyard Poultry, Hobby Farm, and Chickens magazine, as well as HGTVGardens.com and BHG.com, Lisa has become the most trusted voice in natural chicken keeping. She has appeared on P. Allen Smith's radio and television programs, various local programs, and is currently hosting her own "chicken lifestyle" television show on Maine's WPTX-TV. She is the author of Gardening with Chickens, Fresh Eggs Daily, and Duck Eggs Daily, and tours the country speaking and signing books at the Mother Earth News and Country Living fairs. Lisa and her husband live on a small farm in Maine with a menagerie of chickens, ducks, dogs, and an indoor-outdoor barn cat. In her free time, she enjoys knitting socks, sipping herbal tea, and cooking and baking using fresh produce from the garden and fresh eggs from her coop.

"But can a garden-especially a tempting vegetable garden-peacefully coexist with hungry, inquisitive chickens, with their potential to eat tender seedlings, and shred plants with their scratching? It's a smart subject for a book, and the answer, says Gardening With Chickens author Lisa Steele, is that they can not only coexist, but each can benefit the other." - GardenSmartTV "If you're looking for a great guide on raising chickens in your garden, I suggest getting Steele's book." Community Table/Parade.com "Overall, "Gardening with Chickens" is an excellent how-to vegetable gardening book, woven throughout with information on chickens, as if they were simply another standard option in food growing, just like raised beds." Phoenixvillenews.com "Raising Backyard Ducks" episode with Lisa Steele -- Living Homegrown Podcast Living Homegrown Podcast