Hello Heather and Gary
Ooo yes, the hens love any of the soft, bitter greens. They have just polished off two pots of overwintered salad leaves that were just going to seed. They also love chard. We keep them separate from the vegetable plot as they will eat a whole bed’s worth given half a chance.
The eggs are amazing and act as an incentive to the neighbours who might look after them for you! We are very lucky in having someone a five minute walk away that always looks after them for us. He eats eggs every day, so he gets most of our extras too. Having said that, most of our chickens are just pets. Cleo stopped laying at age 7, one of the youngsters, Connie, is always becoming broody and lays very intermittently, Mabel is 9 now, so I doubt if she will lay this year (although she did last year), our star is Lily, who has been laying every other day right through the winter, even though we don’t use artificial light. Monty is just a big, lazy freeloader, but ‘quite a character’.
Good luck with them if you do go ahead. I wrote an extremely long blog article here not long after we got the first two, which you might find useful:- http://firehorse3.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/mabel-and-cleo-keeping-chickens-for.html
Julia x
Great article Julia.
We have had Black Rocks in the past along with Warren Rangers, both great layers.
Having read your article it has made the decision even harder, really love hearing the busy chattering of a few hens in the garden. We will have to wander up the lane this weekend and chat up the few neighbours we have here, sure the thought of fresh eggs might just sway a few to consider the odd weekend hen sitting 
Wow, lovely garden photos, all absolutely beautiful everyone!!! I love gardening, but we have moved house quite a few times and I always have to start again from scratch!! There was a small area of scrub at the back of our new house where dogs used to foul, yek! We had this little boarder put in and I planted it up, it looks great now it’s becoming established.
Such great gardens.
I’ve made some newspaper seedling pots last night as I’m fast running out of the plastic ones.
Peas with for-get-me-nots, wild violets, and pansies
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I would love chickens… I will have to wait until we manage to get a large enough garden. Need that lottery win to come sooner rather than later!
Spent a lovely morning at the allotment with the whole family. Youngest (7 months) in the travel cot asleep, the two year old wandering round, falling over and pulling up weeds. The oldest two helping here and there and eating the small picnic we took along! I noticed the gooseberries are in flower already and even the strawberries!! The Rhubarb has gone mad. We dug up the last of the carrots which, I am pleased to say, have come out really well, despite the rotten weather earlier in the year. Hope to be planting the new crops this weekend. The weather doesn’t look too good for Sunday though.
Has anyone else got plans to plant out this weekend? If so, what are you planting?
@talulahblue your front boarder looks lovely - really cheery.
@Louisa15 I think Acers are probably one of my favourite ornamental trees. The deep red varieties we have planted are in flower at the moment. I know it sounds silly, but I never noticed the flower on them before. Really subtle and pretty.
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this weekend I am going to prick out some seedlings in my greenhouse and hopefully my husband will get the garden rotovated and go round with the weedkiller. We live beside a field so get a lot of weeds.
I have tomatoes, petunias,pansy viola,marigolds, tagetes, parsley ,kale, leeks, and blackeyed susan to climb up my trellis all waiting to be pricked out. I have also begonia and busy lizzies plugs that I bought. Our rhubarb is still quite small but I might be able to pick enough to stew
I also need to tidy my borders and tubs as they look messy with the bulbs in them but I will see how the back is before I do them as I think Sunday is going to be another good day for us (Lanarkshire) and I could do them then
I managed to get two beds of onion sets planted up yesterday and hope to sow some French beans, mangetout and courgettes over the weekend. Thank goodness for this lovely warm weather 
Just come across some photo’s of our veg garden in France and thought they might be of interest.
Very different gardening experience there, we set aside an acre for veggies, which we dug by hand!
We could grow just about everything and the garlic harvest was always good.
The strawberry bed was huge, (that’s what Gary is picking in the second photo), we ate them for breakfast, lunch and supper. We also had apricots, white peach trees, apples, pears, mirabelles and greengages so getting our 5 as day proved easy there.
We also planted a 100 vine vineyard and made a herb compass, (pointing in the right diections), using the old roof tiles broken up
It was always wonderful to stop working and stand gazing at the distant views…
Will see if I can find any shots of any of our other gardens - if we can’t swap cuttings we can at least swop photos. 
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I’d love to had that much land for my garden then maybe if we didn’t have so many foxes I could also have a few chickens.
I’ve been improvising pots again. This time I found 6 dog food tins in my recycle bin I’ve given them a good washing, removed their labels and with the aid of a big needle and hammer I’ve made drainage holes in their bottoms. As they were ring pull tops I’ve used the Tin opener around the top of them to remove the extra metal.
They are now seeded with chives, sweet basil, lemon basin, and marjoram.
I’ve also sown another load of runner beans in another load of improvised newspaper pots.
This is my greengage [URL]=http://s982.photobucket.com/user/LetsDrift/media/Gardening/IMGP2841_zps15775ba7.jpg.html]
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what a lot of hard work! great to see photos
Lucky you to have a greengage Eileen, greengage jam is one of my favourite jams
Greengage jam homemade was my grandfather’s favourite.
I love greengages yum yum always so tastie fresh or in a crumble or made into jam ohhhhh yummmie
Oh, that is amazing! Puts my few raised beds to shame. Looks like you were self sufficient!
I have a duo plum, one is victoria and the other is Reine Claudes which is greengage, its about 7 year old now, i’ve had blossom for the first time this year, doubt i’ll see any fruit though, would be nice as i’ve never tasted Greengage … i dont think :-\
Beautiful blossom What tree is it .
Would love some Chicken’s just 3 or 4 to start with, my dad used to keep them at his allotment, loved the fresh eggs, he had a cockral that was a right sod, it used to chase him out of the pen lol
Hello silverspiral
Haha your Dad’s cockerel made me laugh. :o) In fact, I have just come in from picking some mint and being chased around the bed by Monty. He is much worse in the Spring and Summer when he is trying to keep ‘his ladies’ to himself. I agree about the fresh eggs: they are so different to shop bought.
The tree in the foreground is a flowering cherry, with a crab apple and green gage in the background.
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Hoping to get another day in the garden today.
Cannot believe that the rocket I planted in the first of our new raised beds is showing itself, only sowed it on Wednesday! Started another new flower bed yesterday, dug out the shape and turned the soil over, moved older plants around, divided things and started to plant out some of the many dahlia tubers which we found going cheap in a shop last week, so that’s some Autumn colour to look forward to
Have found some more photo’s of previous gardens, just need to reduce their size and then will upload them here, hope you all like garden photo’s
Looking forward to seeing more of other gardener’s plots…
Bet everyone is aching with all this gardening, I know I am! I decided to stain some of my outside furniture and me today. Now going to scrape the moss off my path, waiting for the jeyes fluid to work. I hate the smell of that stuff
I love the smell of jayes fluid lol
Here is my bramleys cooking apple in full bloom, only got this last year so i’m very pleased with the amount of flowers on it, i did have some pea’s starting to come through where the trellis is but the blinking pigeons have nabbed them 
