Chickens and Worms

Here is my review of the book The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow.... I am in book love. She has devised a mandala garden system that utilizes the natural inclinations of chickens and worms to bring abundance to the veggie garden. Within chicken "domes" the chickens do all the hard work in the garden and the worms constantly turn waste into fertility.

The chickens are allowed onto a bed for only two weeks and either rotated to another bed or put off. If you have room for two or three mandalas then you wouldn't need to move the chickens out of the system. She lays out how to configure this mandala or link many. They are not small and would take a good size backyard to work. The diameter of one mandala is 42 feet. But she also outlines two other gardens that don't use the mandala due to space and one that doesn't even use chickens but uses only worms instead. I recommend this book very much to people wanting to come up with a creative garden layout that will ultimately cut down on work and increase fertility.

She puts six fruit trees within each mandala and makes very good points as to why this is a win/win idea. Woodrow goes into detail about how in Australia they get very high solar radiation akin to the Sahara Desert and Arizona in the US. We deal with saturated light here in the summer as well. Our garden is not on the south but on the east for good reason. Even so, I think what my garden needs more of is not light but dappled shade and relief from the drying summer winds. These things can be achieved by deciduous fruit trees and shrubs. Her system takes this into account. People in lower light areas might consider smaller deciduous shrubs like berries or currants instead of trees.

Woodrow's design is based on circles. She studied what shape gives the most plantable area and greatest accessibility. Her paths cut down on walking back and forth since everything is made to come back to the beginning ie. a circle. She outlines how she propagates and what kinds of inputs your garden might need and where to get these. Given where I live, I should be able to find dry cow patties easily but I don't know yet. She uses river sand and shredded cow patties for her seed mix.

If you can find this book for under $40, grab it! It is packed with information and wisdom. It's only 180 pages but worth it. If your land is very rocky and slopey you may have some problems with the domes. A more level landscape makes her design more applicable. But I am sure with a little work it could be done. Maybe with terraces a little larger than the domes or with rectangular chicken tractors to fit the terrace beds, you could use her system. We have 54 acres but only about one acre of level land, the rest is gently rolling. Actually, the construction of the two large swales created many more feet of space for growing trees on. If I create circle beds larger than the domes throughout the rest of zone 1, then I could move the chickens all over the place.

For those in the city or with very little space at all, you could use the red manure worms. They convert vegetable waste to humus and if properly fed and taken care of don't smell, make noise or use a lot of space.

She makes a good case for really planning the plant succession of your garden. Put down on paper what comes into flower and fruit when and how you can maximize this yield. Plants that are harvested often like lettuce are put to the front of the circle and plants that only get harvested a few times a season are put more to the center or back. Even the fruiting times of the trees in the mandala need to be planned so that the chickens can move in a circle from tree to fruiting tree.

Lastly, she addresses lunar gardening. I have been interested in this for quite some time. Both books by Johanna Paungger are worth checking out if you are interested in lunar influences. Woodrow claims she has witnessed the effects of the moon's different phases on her gardening activities. She writes, the week before the new moon do weeding. The week before the quarter moon as it waxes plant crops for leaf production. The week before the full moon is for plants where the fruit is the thing and the week after this is saved for root crops. She points out that this is a time management tool if nothing else. Keeps you on track and lets no job slip between the cracks. I have already outlined Feb. activities. Yesterday I spent a good part of the day weeding and weed whacking. I really dislike weed whackers but sometimes they are necessary. My dreams include a sweet donkey named Armando and mute guinea fowl.

I really have not been so excited about the ideas in a book for a long time. I think because Woodrow's concept is so practical and design oriented, it is the most useful book I have come across in years. Most permaculture books focus on the food forest to the exclusion of the annual/veggie garden. But most people can't live on fruit alone. Both these elements need to be thoughtfully designed. I am just glad I can use Woodrow's ideas and trial and error to our farm's benefit. So in addition to Armando and the tacit guinea fowl, I see chickens and worms in our future for sure. And I like them both already! :)