FROM WEEDS TO BROAD BEANS, THANKS TO THE CHOOKS

Right down at the bottom of my steep block is an area we levelled many years ago and here I grow things that don't need much attention. Basically this means pumpkins in summer and broad beans in winter.It is divided into 3 bays and I let the weeds grow all year round in at least 1 bay, for the chooks.	Years ago this used to be just very stony, hard clay with lots of enormous, very bad weeds. The garden group and I periodically go over it and remove the stones but otherwise it has been a combination of sheets of coconut-fibre underlay over the trampled weeds, topped with peastraw and left until it has all rotted enough for the chooks to be let in and work it over.
	You can see in the photo how beautiful the soil is now - completely cleared of weeds and fertilized by the chooks over the last 2 months or so. All I do now is rake it level and sow my broad beans. Chooks are excellent workers and time-savers! And mine never stop laying, all year round.
	Today I put the chooks into the second bay and it won't be long until this is cleared and fertilized by them and ready for another crop - maybe globe artichokes, I am thinking, as they take up a lot of room in my crowded vegetable garden at the very top of my block, about 100m away. Up there I have also sown a small, Egyptian variety of broad beans especially grown for falafel. I hope it is far enough away to stop cross-pollination! The house and the rest of the garden are in between.
	My broad beans saved from last year are now lying in the damp soil. I am sowing them later this year so they don't get so tall and floppy before they flower - an idea from Malcolm Campbell.
	Here is the third bay which is now a green manure crop of oats, lupins, self-sown broad beans from last year and something I have forgotten! I still cannot get lucerne to germinate. Eventually I will dig this in and leave it to rot away before giving the chooks a bit of a go in here and then sowing pumpkins in spring. You can also see the border of arrowroot(more visible in the other photos) that I grow to pick and feed the chooks during summer when green feed is hard to find.
	In the hour or so I spent down there today, in the company of the friendliest chooks around, they did a great job of getting on with clearing the weeds in the second bay, converting them into eggs and leaving their manure behind. While I was working away I was practicing my Italian, saying all sorts of crazy stuff out loud to the chooks. Luckily my neighbours are a fair distance away but I am hardly likely to care anyway and Italian should be said in a good, hearty voice! Ciao!