We love our feathered girls and rabbits tremendously, they range freely through our front garden. There are enclosures where they sleep at night, but during the day we let them out to sand-bath, eat grass and insects and have a wonderful time generally.
The only problem with this is that some of our fruit trees have been planted in the front garden and the chickens really enjoy scratching away all the top soil and compost, looking for little grubs to eat. Our trees started looking a little sad so I decided to try something to prevent them from destroying them further.
We cut some chicken wire big enough to cover the sandy, composted area underneath each tree. Cut in from the outside of the wire to the centre and placed the wire on the ground around each tree. There is still mulch under the wire to hold in moisture, preventing the tree from drying out too much between waterings. We placed bricks in a circle under the wire and then placed another circle of bricks on top of the other, the wire is situated in between both rounds of bricks, holding the mesh firmly.
This has worked beautifully for our fruit trees. Our lemon tree has yielded a bumper crop of lemons this season and the chickens are still quite happy with plenty of other areas in the garden to excavate…
Our Strelitzia is in bloom, so pretty…
Have a wonderful day
Linda
Your chickens and rabbit look so healthy! That’s a clever idea to protect your fruit trees. We have a similar problem with deer in the winter eating my plum tree! They are so ‘tall’ that no matter how high we put the protection they always reach up that little bit higher!
I’ve never seen a Strelitzia before, it’s very beautiful.
Hi Linda and welcome to wordpress! Your new look is so beautiful! I have been happy with wordpress even in the beginning I wasn’t sure if it was right decision. I have been thinking long time to change the theme or to start to pay to get more choises, but I’m affraid how the moving happens. I hope you didn’t have difficulties. Did you need someone specialist to help you?
I’ll go to change your address to my ‘Creative Friday’ button.
Sunny wishes! x Teje
Hi Teje,
Thank you so much for visiting:)
I am enjoying WordPress very much! I love how organised it is. I do have an amazing migration specialist moving my blog for me, her name is Jeni and I am going to write a whole post about her soon.
Keep well
Linda
xo
We sadly have too many predators to let our girls roam but they do have a huge enclosed fortress/yard with wire covering the top. Do you not have a predator problem there?
We only have our dogs that we need to watch, the dogs live in the back garden and the chickens in the front. We have managed to keep the dogs away from the chickens so far:)
We used to call that exotic flower “Birds of Paradise.” We had them in our front planter at the little house in Los Angeles. So I felt a jolt of memory when I saw your lovely image. I’d think the chicken wire idea might also be good for digging puppies. We had to put the stuff on the wooden pasture fence posts to keep the horses from actually eating through them like so many beavers. Good stuff, that wire.
What a great idea! Now if I could just figure out how to protect hens and rabbits from my wonderful (but too bossy) dog, I’d be in business! BTW, I’d never heard the proper name ‘Strelitzia’ before either – we call them ‘Birds of Paradise’ here in southern California.
oh its happened! you’ve made the transition and it looks beautiful linda. may your blog find even more happiness and flourish in it’s new home. many blessings. xxx lori
Thank you Lori! It’s good to be here.
You are so kind.
Love
Linda xx
So funny, I posted about our little critters here today. So different than yours!
http://woolies-woolies.blogspot.com
🙂