How to garden as free as a bird

Gardening is one of America’s favorite pastimes, and fortunately, the trick to growing healthier plants with fewer pests and bigger yields might be simpler than you think.

Winning over Americans who don’t raise chickens might be as simple as helping them learn the benefits of keeping a flock.

Chickens are known as nature’s gardeners, after all. Here are the top reasons raising chickens will take your garden to a whole new level.

• Effective natural fertilizer.

Chicken droppings are a highly effective, 100-percent natural fertilizer. The droppings can then be mixed in with your compost pile to make what some people call “black gold” — a fertilizing mixture that plants thrive on.

• Eat unwanted bugs and weeds.

Chickens are great at weeding out unwanted plant species from a garden bed before you plant, such as dandelion, prickly lettuce and purslane. But watch your flock around your vegetables.

• Gasoline-free tillers.

Chickens have a natural tendency to dig and scratch, which is great for preparing a garden bed for planting.

After the growing season, they also will till your garden and help clean out old plants, preventing buildup of disease and harmful bugs.

• Compost turning made simple.

Every compost pile needs to be turned to properly decompose. If you have chickens, you will labor less because they will do much of the necessary turning for you while rooting for food and bugs.

This article is courtesy of Brandpoint.