ALL PLANTS ARE HALF OFF LISTED PRICE

Here are some basic things to try:

1. Take feeders inside at night (not inside the hen house; you don’t want to encourage rodents to try to get in as they can hurt your birds)
2. Don’t put out more food or scraps than the chickens will consume by bedtime
3. Give the chickens an occasional day without food, so they clean up anything around the coop

Then you need to start bringing in the big guns:

1. Bait stations: pet proof ones can be placed along the external perimeter of the coop, or elsewhere in your garden. Our neighbor’s pest control company provides these, filled with an anticoagulant bait. The rats eat the bait, then die elsewhere later. We’ve never had a problem with chickens, pets or other wildlife getting into the bait station.
2. “Humane” traps that trap live rats for disposal, usually drowning (don’t relocate them!)

Resources to help Predator Proof Your Coop

We highly recommend talking to Robert Leonard, 404-281-8146, a carpenter who offers rat-proofing of chicken coops by enclosing feeding areas with hardware cloth, and a door that is closed at night so the rats can’t get to food or leftovers. He also teaches a class at the Wylde Center called “Predator Proofing your Coop”.

Just want to get rid of my chickens.

If you have really decided to get rid of the chickens, try putting a message on the Oakhurst Garden’s chicken group: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/citychickens/. There’s usually someone willing to take strays. Similarly, the Atlanta Backyard Poultry Meetup Group, http://www.meetup.com/chickens/ has message boards where you can advertise chickens needing a home.

Contributed by Anne-Marie Anderson, GCLP at The Celtic Gardener

Plant a garden this weekend!

Oakhurst Community Garden came into my life at a time when I needed it the most. When our first child was delivered stillborn this July after an uncomplicated pregnancy, I thought I might lose my mind in my grief. Some days it was all I could do to get out of bed to feed our dog. My husband urged me to find something to do with myself, and fortunately I had enough clarity to reach out to Daniel Ballard, a friend of ours and the gardener at the Oakhurst Community Garden, who encouraged me to start volunteering at the garden whenever I wanted.

At OCGP, I have learned firsthand the healing power of working in the outdoors. Within a few weeks I found myself looking forward to getting out of bed in the morning so that I could get to the garden, and I would come home in the evenings physically exhausted and excited to update my husband on our latest project. Volunteering at OCGP has also eased the passing of time; while I initially dreaded the change of seasons and felt that time was pulling me further away from my daughter, I now look forward to the changes and enjoy watching and helping the garden adapt.

I tell people now that OCGP was my saving grace. I’ve started working again, but I still volunteer at least weekly at the garden. It is one of those rare places where, each time I go, I can rest assured that I will discover something new that makes me stop and, even, smile.

When I learned that a new community garden space had started just across the street, I was so curious to find out how I might get involved. At the beginning, volunteering at Sugar Creek Garden was appealing because I could (1) learn about organic gardening, (2) get to know others in my community , and (3) spend more time enjoying the peacefulness that being in nature has always provided me.

Over the past year, my initial curiosity and hopefulness about Sugar Creek Garden has grown into a passion that is influencing my life in so many ways. It has been fun to watch the garden grow and to appreciate and tune in to its seasonal changes. When I walk into the garden, I feel like I’ve arrived in an oasis far away from and in vibrant contrast to the traffic choked workday drive that I’ve just completed. Tiny seedlings develop into towering okra plants. Bees, butterflies, caterpillars and other creatures visit to do their work. Summer’s gift of garden fresh red tomatoes slows to a stop, leaving a closing offering of green tomatoes for a batch of chow chow to enjoy when the garden sleeps.

The casual chats that happen amidst gardening activities provide enjoyable social connection with people in my community in the most significant way ever during the 15 years that I’ve lived in Decatur. I’ve applied the things I’ve learned at Sugar Creek to my own yard as well including replacing the front lawn with organic strawberries, watermelon, eggplant, lemongrass and lavender.

Finally, Sugar Creek Garden has sparked another project – Mushroom Cultivation! In August and November we inoculated oak logs with Shiitake mushroom spawn. Mushroom cultivation has been a tremendously interesting project and appears to be an under-developed activity in Decatur gardens. Hopefully, efforts at Sugar Creek Garden will lead to classes and materials to support the growth of DIY mushroom cultivation in Decatur. ..stay tuned!