Lucy Lovely

Every scrap from the kitchen goes to the chickens. All garden waste goes to the chickens. If I want to start a new garden area, I fence it and put in chickens and throw waste from everything in there. Poop from the other animals goes in there. They eliminate any fly problem because they love larvae of all kinds. Their manure is very hot, so after they take down all the vegetation in an area, it is dug a couple of inches and is fertilized and ready to plant just a few weeks after you move the chickens somewhere else.They eliminate an enormous amount of work if you want to clear an area of vegetation and bugs.They eat their own feathers which are a good source of calcium, and if you don't take the eggs every day, some will break the eggs of others and eat them. Egg shells are a good source of calcium and a favored food. Chicks are good for the first few days. They have the nourishment already inside them, but can be fed egg white, just like they were eating before they were hatched. They will start eating right away, and they will eat any kind of vegetable or fruit, larvae af different bugs are favored by all chickens. They will chase each other to get a piece of bug. If a chicken gets an injury involving blood, the other chickens will cannibalize that chicken, so it needs to be kept separate until healed so it won't be mistaken for food. They love meat of all kinds, fresh or rotten, and a good way to clean up a rotting dead body and get rid of the odor is to let the chickens at it. You don't ever have to buy food for a chicken. They like almost everything, and a diet high in grain is not the best diet for chickens, but is the best diet for agribusiness. They like coffee grounds, and i call the eggs that come from chickens who eat coffee grounds "wake up eggs'' and i picture in my mind 2 fried eggs side by side staring at me. I don't know how anyone can actually use chickens to eat the bugs from a garden. They will eat bugs, but not squash bugs, or at least not mine, but they will eat all the squash and the vines too. So they are good to clean up a garden that you want to replant entirely, but you can't choose which plants they will eat.If you let them run free, they will get plenty to eat, but you can't control where they fertilize.They will eliminate any amount of compost rapidly. if you put in a lot of vegetable matter, the high heat of chicken poop transforms it all very rapidly. A couple of weeks. Everything gets plenty of turning when chickens are involved.

Daylily is hemerocallis.And what is life without onions. it's not so much about a single most nutritious crop,as a lot of different plants that appear in different seasons, climates, changing weather patterns. The same things don't do consistently well year after year after year. Each year has it's own ups and downs, and the plants that yield are different accordingly.

Turnips are an easy annual to grow. in Texas they like to be grown any time except summer. Delicious and nutritious. They are nothing like storebought. Jerusalem artichokes are great, but tend to be invasive, good starch for diabetics. Can make a wall of plants quick providing shade for other plants that don't like so much heat. They are a sunflower, but the seeds are for the birds. The stalks provide good sticks. If you leave some roots in the ground they spread easily. A large amount of return for very little work. All farm animals seem to like to get into them and dig them up though. Daylilies are an excellent perennial root vegetable . They will naturalize when planted, and they get bigger and bigger each year. One plant will put out many blooms which make a delicious vegetable for one day (hence daylilies), but the dried blooms are good in soups. The unopened buds are similar to green beans in appearance, and are also delicious, all parts of this plant are good raw or cooked, and it is a native. I also eat the roots of lesser ragweed while I'm cleaning up the garden. They run along just under the surface spreading the plant early in the spring. It is thought that some degree of allergy resistance is formed from eating the plant.I have no problems from it. But I don't know about other people. It tastes like water chestnuts, but is a skinny little tuber. Cattails are a wonderful tuber to eat, and they take care of themselves pretty much, and of course every part of this plant is useful, if you have a pond or marsh or ditch that fills with water to grow them in, but they store some toxins, so the water and soil that they grow in must be good already, if not, cattails will improve the quality of water and soil. If you live where there is enough water and not too much cold and probably acidic soil, kudzu makes a good root vegetable, but is considered invasive. This is a nutritious plant used throughout the world with a fascinating history in the US. It is illegal to sell the plant here, but you can go gather it where it does grow, and confine it in your garden. It is a legume and builds the soil, It's leaves are nutritious for livestock, but it is so very invasive.It is the fastest growing plant in the world.It does not produce seed in the US. It has no enemies or pollinators here. It has many many uses.I like parsnips, and you have to love dandelions. Dandelions may be the winner for most nutritious root, and you just have to get it going and leave it alone. It is not native, but it likes it everywhere. Comfrey is a good nutritious herbal root to have on hand and is easy to grow if you can keep all the animals away from it.