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Saturday, December 1, 2007

My Veggie Garden Weed Eater

I dislike weeding my veggie garden, so I came up with a way for the girls (hens) to do the work for me.
I plant my garden in 3' wide beds..... so I can still reach the middle of each bed easily. There are 5 rows of veggies in each bed.
The veggies are planted close enough to choke out any weeds in the beds, but the 1 1/2' walk ways need to be weeded.
This is where my girls come in...............I made a weedeater...tunnel out of pvc pipe, garden hoop wire and chicken wire.
The weedeater is in two pieces....each about 6', I can easily carry them with one hand.
I made the base frame out of pvc.......attached some garden tunnel hoop wire and covered the whole thing with chicken wire. I attached the chicken wire to the frame with small hog rings.

The chicken coop and run are next to the garden.........by making "doors" in my chicken run fence, the chickens are able to come into the garden walkways and eat all weeds without eating my plants.
When a row is weeded, they are coaxed back into the pen with grain........the weedeater is moved to the next walk way and another doorway is opened for them to come into the weedeater tunnel to clean up those weeds....and on and on.

The whole process of weeding the walkways takes less than 30 minutes.

The girls are happy and so am I.................I do not have to weed. :)