If you’ve ever considered raising chickens alongside your garden, there’s a good chance that my guest this week helped shape how you think about it. Lisa Steele is the author of the bestselling book “Gardening with Chickens,” which she recently updated for its 10th anniversary edition.
Lisa is a fifth-generation chicken keeper and has spent the last 17 years teaching others how to raise happy, healthy chickens in their backyards. She was a Wall Street accountant before she began keeping chickens, developing recipes and writing books. She hosts “Welcome to My Farm,” which airs on PBS/CreateTV, from her farm in Maine. Her popular blog is Fresh Eggs Daily.
Chicken keeper and author Lisa Steele.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
“Gardening with Chickens” has become the go-to guide for integrating chickens into a productive, sustainable garden. The new anniversary edition is much more than a simple rerelease. Based on her additional decade of chicken keeping experience and the lessons she learned from moving to a different climate, she added to and subtracted from the book and made revisions for an even deeper dive into raising poultry as part of a gardening ecosystem. Lisa brings a fresh perspective on what really works and what she’d do differently.
Lisa was last on the podcast back in 2019 to discuss the benefits and challenges of gardening with chickens. We were overdue to reconnect, and Lisa was eager to share her new insights.
The Benefit of Experience
Lisa said it would have been a disservice to her readers to just slap a new cover on her book and take some new pictures.
“So we took it right down to the bare bones and I went through every section and thought about, is this really important?” she explains. “ Is this something that people need to know or I’ve been asked questions about? And because I was in Maine now and not Virginia, I skipped three planting zones, so I had to rethink how I was growing things and planting things. And I learned a lot, and I thought it would be very helpful no matter where you live.”
When Lisa moved to Maine 11 years ago, she took a Master Gardener course to help familiarize herself with her new growing climate. When she updated her book, she integrated cold climate information — such as the fact that chickens don’t need a heated coop even on sub-freezing nights.
“We didn’t take out a ton,” she says of revising the book. “There’s still really helpful lists of what plants are beneficial for chickens, which you should stay away from, things that can be toxic.”
With 10 more years of chicken keeping experience, Lisa has more to say about gardening with chickens.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
Protecting Chickens from Predators
The biggest addition to the book is more information about predators.
Lisa says people watch chicken keepers on Instagram and think, “I’ll buy a cute dress and a little hat, and I’ll go out and collect eggs.”
Then reality sets in, she says, and they realize there are raccoons, foxes and neighbors’ dogs.
“ I thought it was really important to let people know that while you can integrate your chickens into your yard and your landscaping in your garden, you have to keep them safe.”
Lisa’s chicken run is made with half-inch welded wire that she sank into a trench so predators can’t dig under it. She includes owl statues with heads that spin in the wind to try to keep hawks away. Around the perimeter are flashing lights that go on at night.
She secures her coop with a padlock and also recommends spring-loaded eye-hooks and carabiners. She knows that if a toddler can open the locks on your chicken coop, a raccoon can.
She also sprays wolf urine — the scent of an apex predator, to keep other predators away.
Over windows, regular screens are not going to cut it, she adds. Welded wire is necessary over any windows that open and close.
“ I feel like you can’t have enough layers of security, some for at daytime, some for at nighttime. You can’t be too careful,” she says.
Fencing not only protects chickens, it protects your garden from those chickens. While there are times that it is helpful to have chickens inside your vegetable beds, they can’t be given access year-round if you want a successful garden.
Being a chicken owner myself, I have lived through some of the worst experiences that come with keeping chickens, like when neighbors’ loose dogs have come onto my farm and massacred the free-ranging hens.
Lisa points out that dogs are tougher to deter than foxes and coyotes because they are not afraid of people. Keeping dogs out would require electric fencing, she says.
Plastic owls with swivel heads can help deter predators.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
Gardening with Chickens Across Zones
Lisa grew up in Massachusetts but it wasn’t until she was an adult living on Long Island that she began gardening. She then lived in Virginia before moving to Maine. So she has gardening experience in three different USDA Plant Hardiness Zones.
On Long Island, planting mostly occurred on Mother’s Day. In Virginia, plants needed to be in the ground by February to avoid being burned by June. And now living in Maine, she doesn’t plant until Memorial Day.
Though Maine has a shorter growing season than Virginia and Long Island, it benefits from having long days in summer. Those extra hours of sunlight help plants mature.
“You’re thinking there’s no way that this stuff is going to grow, but we have such long days in the summer that you can be harvesting in six weeks,” Lisa says.
Everything is about timing, she says, and that’s true of planting times and when it’s advantageous or detrimental to let chickens into the garden.
The appropriate planting time for various crops is different from one growing zone to the next. This also influences the best time to allow chickens into your garden and when to exclude them.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
Co-exist with Insects
Lisa has also added more information on the garden insects and notes that not every bug is a bad bug.
“You shouldn’t just go out and start killing all the bugs in your garden because there is an ecosystem and there are some bugs that eat other bugs and there are some bugs that help to pollinate or aerate the soil, or this or that,” she says. “So just don’t start indiscriminately killing bugs.”
In fact, she adds, encouraging bugs in your garden is beneficial. She recalls finding an insect and rather than squashing it, finding out what it is. It turned out to be a bug that eats true insect pests, namely aphids.
She encouraged organic insect control practices rather than spraying chemicals.
Lisa put out pails of water around her rose bushes. Japanese beetles fall in, and then she gives those beetles to her chickens as a treat.
“There’s all kinds of things you can do without just bringing out the spray bottle,” she says.
Invasive Japanese beetles are a nutritious snack for chickens. Feeding them to chickens is a better control method than spraying.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
Chickens Throughout the Seasons
Chickens are like free farm labor.
“In the spring, before you plant anything, let the chickens in. They’ll scratch up the soil. They’ll aerate it. They’ll fertilize it a little bit, and they’ll also dig for weed seeds and bug larvae that have overwintered,” Lisa says. “So they’ll really clean up your soil, like they can prep it for you, which is a great benefit — and they love it.”
Once plantings are in, the chickens must be kept out.
“When you’re thinning your seedlings, you can give them to the chickens. They love ’em. They’re like microgreens. They’re super nutritious, so don’t throw away your thin seedlings.”
In summer, chickens don’t belong in the garden, she says, unless you can supervise them carefully because they’re quick and sneaky and won’t just eat the weeds — they’ll just eat everything.
And in the fall, once you have harvested everything you want, let the chickens in to finish off the bug-eaten tomatoes, the cucumbers that a raccoon got to and other damaged produce, Lisa advises. The chickens will go through, turn everything over, get stems and stalks into the soil, and will also eat bugs that were planning on overwintering there.
“You will notice a huge reduction in bugs in your garden, but they’ll also eat all the worms too, which is really bad,” she says. “When I had the chickens out in the garden with me, I would always have a bucket to throw the worms in to save them because you don’t want your chickens to eat all your earthworms.”
Don’t let chickens make a meal out of your winter sowing project.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
Use the Right Fencing
Some smaller breeds are better at jumping fences than larger hens.
“ I tend to have the bigger-bodied girls that are not getting up off the air,” Lisa says.
A flimsy fence like poultry netting, compared to a fence with a stable wooden top, will stop chickens from being able to land on the fence and get over it.
Ensure your chickens are fenced in appropriately. Depending on the breed, some chickens can fly over the average fence.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
Landscaping Inside a Chicken Run
Lisa recently added lilac shoots (protected from the chickens) inside her run. When the plants mature, she can remove the protection and the plants will be able to tolerate any damage from the chickens.
“ The free ranging thing, it stresses me, so I want to make inside the run more like outside for them, I want them to feel like they’re free ranging when they’re not,” she says. “… We always put our Christmas tree in there once we take the Christmas tree down, I rake leaves in there for them. I just want to make it more terrarium-like and less just like a run full of dirt.”
Protect young plants from hungry and curious chickens.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
Getting Started
Lisa does not recommend spending a ton of money when starting out. “Just get the lay of the land and then a few years in, get the setup that you really want, because your setup is super important,” she says.
There are important questions that will arise once you have chickens, like how far is too far from the house? Is it going to be a pain to shovel snow 300 yards down to the chicken coop in the winter?
“It’s completely unique to everybody, so those are things that people should think about,” she says.
Lisa’s approach is also low-maintenance. She says she can take care of her chickens in five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night.
“I read about people cleaning their run. I’ve never cleaned my run in 17 years,” she notes.
She lets the sun and rain do that work and waits for the chicken manure to decompose on its own.
“There’s people that clean their coop out every week. I clean my coop like every three months. Like I think people overthink it and they overdo it and then they get burnt out because they’re doing too much work,” she says.
Chicken keepers are rewarded with nutritious and delicious fresh eggs.
Courtesy of Homestead Living
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with Lisa Steele on “Gardening with Chickens,” you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
Do you have chickens and a garden? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 135: Backyard Chickens: Benefits and Challenges for Gardeners, with Lisa Steele
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
“Gardening With Chickens: Planning, Planting, and Harvesting with Your Flock” by Lisa Steele
“Fresh Eggs Daily” by Lisa Steele
“In Season: 125+ Sweet and Savory Recipes Celebrating Simple, Fresh Ingredients” by Lisa Steele
“101 Chicken Keeping Hacks from Fresh Eggs Daily: Tips, Tricks, and Ideas for You and Your Hens” by Lisa Steele
“DIY Chicken Keeping from Fresh Eggs Daily: 40+ Projects for the Coop, Run, Brooder, and More!” by Lisa Steele
“Duck Eggs Daily: Raising Happy, Healthy Ducks…Naturally” by Lisa Steele
Territorial Seed Company – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Soil3 – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Milorganite® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I receive a commission every time you purchase a product through an Amazon affiliate link. Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Cool Springs Press / Quarto Group and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
