Gardening with help from Roto and Vater.

There’s an old saying that if a man (or woman) doesn’t have a pig, they need to do the work of a pig.  Well I don’t have a pig but I’ve got a lot of roosters. Those of you with chooks - and by that I mean chooks and a rooster - will know that when there are chickens, the law of probability is almost always in favour of most of them being roosters. But you won’t know that for several weeks as you enjoy and feed and nurture the cute little blighters. The day will come when you start to realise the legs are looking particularly strong, the little ruff around the neck starts to become more pronounced and then like young’uns everywhere – they start little playfights with each other.  Then of course the final straw is when you hear this dreadful broken sounding screech as they start to practice their crowing and you realise that yes: definitely roosters. 

Last autumn I rescued 7 gorgeous chicks and along with their mum, took them to my mother’s where they were safe from the predators on our land.   They did all of the above and sure enough, out of 7 chickens?  Five roosters.  And they’ve got to go. This year I decided to put them to work as, I’m sure you will be aware when they do manage to get into your garden, they are very efficient at a spot of rotovating.   Those big rooster feet would be just right to help dig over my garden beds. 

I don’t get much time in the garden these days now I have a “proper job” but it is still the thing I love to do the most.  With limited time on my hands and determined not to use weed killer it can be a bit frustrating not having the time to do what I need to do.  We also made this garden straight from paddock. In hindsight I would have done my best to get rid of the grass first as I find grass is the worst weed.   So I am dealing with big paddock weeds still such as couch grass and California thistle and doing my best to get it all out by the roots. I reckon if I keep going year after year in each bed I”ll get there in the end. Time to get those pesky roosters on the job. 

Now that's a particularly nice crop of weeds. With some help from a strong man we got most most of the worst of the weeds pulled out and then onto the fire. Then to finish it off, I let the roosters do the work. 

We got one of the little hutches and shut 3 young roosters in, making a run within the garden bed.  They did and have been doing a great job of cleaning up.  Get that chicken tractor going I say! Keep an eye on them though as the two black ones ganged up on the pretty coloured one, so out he came and popped back in with the original mob. So two lovely big black chooks, now named Roto and Vater are happily digging up garden beds for me.  I find that once they have dug it over an eaten everything green, I can then go in and dig it over and it is such a headstart on what was otherwise a very daunting overgrown garden bed.   

 This bed has been particularly bad and I haven’t been able to properly garden in it.  Once they boys got it down and have been moved onto the next patch, I have followed on with a heavy garden fork and getting out tons of long racemes of couch root.  Its very dry at the moment so I can do this even though it is the middle of winter. As always, if the bed is wet, don’t work it. So here is a before and after.