How to Grow Hens And Chicks in House Garden

Hens and chicks are members of the Sempervivum group of succulent plants. They are commonly called houseleeks and grow well indoors and out, in cool or hot temperatures. Hens and chicks plants are so called because of the rosette shape and habit of the plant to produce numerous babies. A rockery or dry, nutrient challenged location is a good place for growing hens and chicks. An easy to care for garden scheme should include hens and chicks, sedum, and sprawling rock cress.

Using Hens and Chicks Plants
Hens and chicks is an alpine plant, which gives it an amazing tolerance for poor soils and unwelcoming conditions. The mother plant is attached to the baby chicks by an underground runner. The chicks may be as small as a dime and the mother can grow to the size of a small plate. Chicken hens and chicks make excellent container plants both for the interior and exterior of the home.
How to Grow Hens and Chicks

Growing hens and chicks is easy. The plants are readily available in most nurseries. They require full sun and well drained, even gritty soil. Hens and chicks don’t need much fertilizer and should rarely be watered. As succulents, hens and chicks plants are accustomed to very little water. A fun project is learning how to grow hens and chicks from the offsets. The chick can be gently pulled off the mother plant and installed in a new location. Hens and chicks require very little soil and can be made to grow even in rock crevasses.

The ideal temperature for hens and chicks is between 65 and 75 degrees F. (18-24 C.). When temperatures zoom upwards or plummet down, the plants become semi-dormant and will cease growing. Potted plants can be placed in clay pots with a cactus or succulent mix. You can also make your own with two parts topsoil, two parts sand, and one part perlite. Potted plants will need more fertilizer than those in the ground. A liquid fertilizer diluted by half should be watered in during spring and summer irrigation. You can also grow hens and chicks from seed. Online nurseries carry an amazing array of varieties and seeding your own will give you many forms for you and your friends. Seed is sown in a cactus mix and misted until evenly damp, then the seeds are kept in a warm room until germination. After germination, some fine gravel is sprinkled around the plants to help conserve moisture. Seedlings will need to be misted every few days and grown in a bright sunny window. Transplant them after they have reached an inch (2.5 cm.) in diameter.

Hens and chicks plants need little care. The mother plant will die off after four to six years and should be removed. The plants produce a flower when mature and these should be pulled off the plant when they expire. Divide the chicks from the mother plant at least every two years to prevent overcrowding.
Urban chicken farming is everywhere in my little suburban area. We are used to seeing “chicken found” or “chicken lost” signs and even chickens themselves strutting across our lawns. Those folks didn’t do a very good job of chicken proofing their garden. However, you don’t just want the chickens running amok. Protecting plants from chickens is also a priority. How to protect poultry house backyard garden with chicken breeding, pls follow this article and find out how to protect plants from chickens.

Garden Plants and Chickens

There’s nothing like a freshly laid egg for breakfast. For this reason and because more and more people are concerned about how their food is grown, urban poultry farming is all the rage. Adding chickens to your landscape has more benefits than just fresh laid eggs, but it can also have its share of problems.

Chickens scratch to get at bugs, often a boon to the gardener, but all that aggressive scratching can wreak havoc on tender plants. Once they get an area free of plant life, it turns into an inexpensive chicken waterer. So, it’s important to keep garden plants and chickens either at a safe distance or go with it and install chicken accessories or chicken coop for the chickens.

Don’t let the fact that the chickens might disturb a few plants deter you. The benefits of having chickens outweigh the downsides. Since they tend to eat pests such as beetles, aphids, and larvae, your garden will be less affected by them with no need for chemical controls. Their feces make an incredibly rich fertilizer and while they’re pecking around the garden, they eat many weed seeds that might otherwise overtake the garden. In fact, many gardeners move the chickens to different areas of the garden to reap the benefits of the manure as well as the removal of larvae, pests, and weeds by their feathered friends.

How to Protect Plants from Chickens

If, however, the chickens are a little overzealous and you’re losing too many plants, you’re probably wondering how to chicken proof your garden. There are a number of methods for chicken proofing a garden. The most obvious is fencing off the most problematic areas. There are a number of ways to do this. Probably the most common is chicken wire. There’s a reason it’s called chicken wire.

Certainly, you will want to fence off the vegetable garden since there will be new, tender seedlings coming up, as well as tempting bare areas the chickens can’t keep their talons out of. You don’t have to use chicken wire; any wire barrier works. Livestock fencing or sturdy wire mesh works well. Creating a hedge will also block the chickens from areas you would rather not have them in.
If you don’t want to make an entire fenced area, there are other ways of protecting plants from chickens. Rocks placed around the base of new plants will keep the chickens from scratching and digging them up. Cloches or netting around plants will also protect them. Trellising keeps plants up and out of reach. Tall container plantings will keep the chickens away from vulnerable plants, as do hanging baskets.

Plant flowerbeds close together. Any bare patches of dirt are irresistible to chickens. Also, keep an area of the backyard chicken coop as a poultry fountain to keep the chickens from scratching other areas of the landscape. Sprinkle it with diatomaceous earth periodically to keep them mite free.

You don’t just want to focus on keeping the plants from the chickens; you might want to incorporate some plants just for the chickens, especially if they are free range. It’s a good idea to plant at least one evergreen so they have cover in the winter and a dense thicket of bushes so they can scratch and doze under them during hot days. Chicken friendly berries, like elderberries or blueberries, are a great option for the thicket. The hens will snack away on the berries, thereby cutting the costs of expensive poultry feeds.

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