Chicken Coops & Gardens: How to Put Your Chicken Coop to Work in the Garden
I learned to garden long before I ever thought about raising chickens.
Every year my parents gardened together, each fulfilling roles that suited their skills and overlapped as needed to tend to the large plot that nearly filled our entire back yard. From spring through fall, gardening was an integral part of our daily routine, from spring planting and harvesting early crops like radishes, peas and lettuce to summer squash and finally our favorite, sweet corn and tomatoes.
So when my husband and I eventually had a home of our own on three acres, putting in a garden was almost inevitable. And we didn't exactly start small. We planted a 60 × 100-foot garden which I filled with perennials such as blueberry bushes, a raspberry patch, strawberry beds and asparagus, fruit trees, and rhubarb, as well as several beds for annual crops.
But the one thing I didn’t grow up with was chickens.
When I started researching natural ways to improve my garden soil, I kept coming across the same idea: chickens and gardens work incredibly well together.
So when I built my first chicken coop, I connected it directly to the garden. I could open up their run into that huge 60 × 100-foot space and let them go to work.
I loved it. And so did my kids.
Of course, the chickens gave us fresh eggs and endless entertainment for my two small children. But I quickly discovered they could contribute to the garden, too. They helped with fall cleanup, scratching through spent plants and garden debris, while producing one of the most valuable ingredients for compost: manure.
And suddenly it all fit together.
The chickens produced manure. The manure became compost. The compost fed the garden. And the garden produced scraps, weeds and spent plants that went right back into the system.
It was a wonderfully simple cycle, and one I’ve been fascinated with ever since.
Years later, when I began designing what would eventually become the Queen of Coops® ecoSYSTEM, that old lesson was still in the back of my mind:
Chickens and gardens simply go hand in hand.
1. Let Chickens Help With Garden Cleanup
One of my favorite times to let chickens into the garden is after the growing season.
Once you've harvested, chickens can scratch through spent vegetation, hunt for insects, eat many leftover plants and seeds, and generally have a marvelous time dismantling what remains.
They also leave something behind: manure.
Of course, chickens and an actively growing vegetable garden require a little diplomacy. Chickens don't necessarily distinguish between the weed you want removed and the lettuce you've been babying for six weeks.
But with controlled access, especially during fall cleanup, they can be surprisingly useful little garden workers.
2. Turn Chicken Manure Into Compost
Chicken manure is valuable, but fresh manure is generally too concentrated to apply directly around actively growing plants. Composting is what turns it into garden gold.
Combine manure and soiled bedding with carbon-rich materials such as dry leaves, straw and garden debris, give the pile time to break down, and eventually you have a rich soil amendment you can return to the garden.
That's the beautiful cycle:
Chickens → manure → compost → garden → food.
And your garden provides plenty of material to send back through the compost pile.
3. Put the Compost Bin Where the Manure Is
This was one of the ideas that eventually became central to the Queen of Coops.
Why keep the compost pile somewhere else?
And why shovel manure out of the coop, load it into a wheelbarrow, haul it across the yard, unload it into a compost pile and then eventually haul the finished compost back to the garden?
That's a lot of hauling manure around.
The Tilt ’N Slide® Compo-Roost takes advantage of the fact that chickens do much of their pooping while they're on the roost at night. Manure moves out of the coop and directly into an exterior compost bin.
Add garden and yard waste there and let composting do its thing.
No separate compost pile. No hauling manure across the yard.
4. Use Your Chicken Coop for Vertical Gardening
Once you start thinking of the coop as part of the garden, another opportunity becomes obvious:
Grow on it.
Cucumbers, pole beans, peas, indeterminate tomatoes and flowering vines all need vertical support anyway.
The cattle-panel trellises incorporated into the Queen of Coops provide growing space without requiring another dedicated patch of ground.
I particularly love the idea of growing tomatoes around the coop.
The chickens make the manure. The manure makes the compost. The compost feeds the tomatoes.
The coop feeds the garden. The garden climbs the coop.
That's my kind of efficiency.
5. Make the Coop's Footprint Produce Food
A chicken coop takes up valuable backyard real estate. Why shouldn't that space do more than one job?
The Queen of Coops ecoSYSTEM occupies roughly a 12 × 14-foot footprint, but within that area you've got:
80 square feet of coop and run, approximately 50 square feet of garden space, a 16-square-foot compost bin, and front and rear trellising for vertical growing.
And, of course, the chickens are producing eggs.
Instead of thinking of the coop as space taken away from the garden, I wanted it to become part of the food-producing system.
6. Use the Coop to Extend Your Growing Season
The relationship doesn't have to end when summer does.
The Queen of Coops® DIY Kit includes SmartFlex Sidelights™, clear roll-down integrated PVC panels that provide flexible seasonal weather protection, while the integrated raised beds can be fitted with clear polycarbonate cold-frame end panels to help extend the growing season.
That means the same structure that's sheltering your chickens can also help protect plants during those awkward shoulder seasons when nights are cold but there is still plenty of useful sunshine.
Start earlier in spring. Keep growing later into fall.
One footprint. A longer garden season.
7. Let the Coop Become Part of the Garden
There's another benefit to bringing the coop and garden together that has nothing to do with compost.
It can be beautiful.
A chicken coop doesn't have to be the smelly utility building hidden behind the garage.
Surround it with raised beds. Grow flowers and vegetables together. Train vines over the trellises. Add a garden path. Paint or stain the front to complement your house and landscape.
Instead of figuring out where to hide the chicken coop, make it somewhere you actually enjoy spending time.
And if manure is continually moving out of the chickens' living area and into an outdoor composting system, you've also addressed one of the biggest reasons people want the coop far away in the first place.
8. Make Your Chicken Coop Earn Its Footprint
After years of keeping chickens and gardening, I've come to think we ask too little of most chicken coops.
Yes, a coop needs to keep chickens safe and comfortable.
But why stop there?
A well-designed coop can house the flock, make compost, feed the garden, provide vertical growing space, help extend the growing season, produce food and even become a centerpiece of the backyard.
That's the idea behind the Queen of Coops® DIY Kit: Heart of a Homestead ecoSYSTEM in a 12 × 14 footprint.
It didn't begin with the idea of squeezing a garden onto a chicken coop.
It began with something I learned years ago, after opening the gate between my first flock and that enormous 60 × 100-foot garden:
Chickens and gardens were meant to work together.
Kimberley Fisher
Queen of Coops®