I want to tell you about a rather exciting new plant I am growing in the garden this year.  RELATE, the marriage guidance and relationship counseling organisation last year launched a range of specially bred plants designed to overcome many of the challenges which their research showed most often led to conflict among gardening couples.  The one I am trialling (see above) is the ‘Flowering Lettuce’, designed to support couples where one partner wants to grow food at the expense of growing vegetables, and the other only wants to grow flowers.  Apparently this is responsible for 28% of all the disputes RELATE work with.  I was dubious, but last week, after 3 weeks of just looking like a normal lettuce, it burst into beautiful flowers!  I’m impressed.  You can also eat the flowers, which are said to have a slight taste of malt, but they are so beautiful I can’t bring myself to.

Closer investigation reveals this little fella (see right) and his mates, happily munching their collective way through what should have been my leek supply for the winter. The only suggestion as to what they were came from a browse of  Charles Dowding’s essential ‘Organic Gardening’ book, which suggested they could be the maggots of the ‘leek moth’ (I already don’t like it, just its name alone breeds instant dislike), or to use its Latin name, Acrolepiopsis assectella.

Given that from Dowding’s (albeit brief) list  of potential leek ailments, white rot and rust were clearly not what I had, I set off to find out more about leek moths.  I popped to the website of the Royal Horticultural Society, and as soon as I clicked the link, I recoiled, there was my leek!  All dishevelled and crumbly looking!  Apparently, the leek moth has only been present in the UK since 2003, and is also rather partial to onions and shallots (you have been warned).  Originally they were just found on the coasts, but they are heading inland in southern England (the guy at GrowsonYou.com reckons he has been unlucky enough to have them on his leeks, as far north as Hereford!).  The leek moth is, of course, just one of the many species moving northwards as the climate becomes more to their liking.

Apparently, larger plants are more able to resist, but I had mine out really early this year, so that can’t be it.  As I delve deeper into the murky world of the leek moth, it seems that life may never be the same again (at least not so long as I live in southern England).  Over at the Saunders Allotment website, I’m told that “realistically, if you live in an area where leek moth is prevalent the only way forward is to provide some form of physical barrier to prevent the female moth reaching the crop”.  Once the maggots turn into moths, in the autumn, they overwinter, and then next year, there they are again!  Boo.

So the only thing for it is fleece apparently.  No pesticide exists, no other way of dealing with it.  They’ll all have to be pulled up and got rid of.  Only thing I can think of is chicken tractoring, to get rid of the overwintering critters.  But then, if this year’s gardening experience is anything to go by, I need fleece also for the carrots to keep the carrot fly out, and fleece to keep the wretched cabbage whites off my brassicas.  Might as well just cover the whole garden in it.  Perhaps I could get a grant for it under the UK Government’s low carbon strategy, as all that white surface would reflect a good deal of sunlight back into space?  Didn’t see it mentioned in James Lovelock’s recent piece on geoengineering though…   Perhaps the leek moth, a climate change tourist, might end up triggering a collective response to climate change?  Or perhaps, more likely, just increase imports of leeks from more northerly climes.  You have been warned.

The first gem of information which I found somewhere that I now can’t find, was that 1 adult chicken gives of 15w of heat, so 4 chickens give off the equivalent of one 60w lightbulb, which on a winters night in a greenhouse is not to be sniffed at. Of course, given that greenhouses are not exactly the best insulated structures in existence, this may well all be a lot of effort for little gain.  However, I persist.

So, the great news is that after a discussion with me and a tour of my work-in-progress chicken greenhouse, my next door neighbour is now building one too, far better thought out and constructed than mine, so my little cul-de-sac is now officially the World Centre for Research into Chicken Greenhouses (or WCRCG as it is known in academic circles).  It can surely only be a matter of months before coachloads of men in white coats with clipboards are seen in the street, carefully reverse-engineering our astonishingly efficient chicken greenhouses (either that or coming to take the two of us away for our own protection).

So, news on mine firstly.  I have to be honest, what what with one thing and another, not a great deal has happened since that last post.  I really need to take a couple of weeks off just to catch up on projects like this!  As readers of the previous piece will recall, I have inherited an existing chicken house which I am ‘retrofitting’ and making fit for purpose.  I have begun work on insulating it, using left over Pavatherm from the retrofitting of my kitchen (see right).  I will then line it with T&G boards, as Pavatherm would, I’m sure, be great fun to pick at.  The idea is to insulate the 5 sides of the chickenhouse that do not join onto the greenhouse, so that more or the heat makes it out.  This should be finished soon.  Still working on the exact connection between the two, but it will have vents that can open or close.

My neighbour’s is a far more technically superior attempt (see above).  He was already planning to put up a greenhouse, an aluminium framed one he had got hold of, and was also planning to keep chickens, but the concept of a chicken greenhouse seems to have fired his creativity.  He glazed the greenhouse apart from the north-facing side, which he panelled instead using plywood held in place by the same clips intended to hold the glazing in. He also plans to put in place a rather impressive but low tech rainwater harvesting system. He has open-and-closeable vents at the top and the bottom (see left) which will enable him to regulate how much heat passed from one to the other.

I will keep you updated on developments.  Both of us are getting a bit late for putting chickens in them this year, but we’ll see.  Any tips, thoughts or enormous research grants are most welcome.

The idea is straightforward and works brilliantly on paper.  Patrick Whitefield in ‘Permaculture in a Nutshell’ sets it out very clearly (you can read it here), and you can read the thinking behind the Chicken/Greenhouse  here.  The picture below is taken from ‘In a Nutshell’, and captures the essential idea, which is that by placing the 2 elements of chickenhouse and greenhouse together with the proper orientation, you enable, via. good design, interactions to take place that otherwise would not take place and would require energy inputs to make happen.  For example, the warmth from the chickens keeps the greenhouse free of frost, the carbon dioxide from the hens benefits the plants, and so on.

On paper it is simplicity itself, and has developed a kind of iconic status as an all-round Good Idea.  I regularly see people have ‘aha!’ moments when I teach the chicken/greenhouse, lightbulbs coming on in brains around the room.  In practice, I am starting to wonder.  I have spent the last couple of days putting up the frame of my new greenhouse, build as an add-on to a south-facing wall off my garage.  The greenhouse is 8′ by 16′ and is a deeply thrilling addition to family life. The picture to the left shows the west-facing aspect of it to which I want to affix my chicken house.

And next, here is the chickenhouse, a recent acquisition from a former Skilling Up for Powerdown student, who offered it in exchange for our going to collect it (she was moving house… it is not a regular outcome of the course that people, at the end of the course, get rid of their henhouses…).  It is a well built timber hen house about 4ft by 4ft, and the picture to the right shows the end of it that will be joining onto the greenhouse.  As you can see it has a vent at the top.

So, my question has been how do I most successfully join these two elements together, and has anyone done so, and most importantly did it actually work?  I remember in Ireland meeting someone whose father kept 5 chickens in his conservatory, and swore it kept it frost free… I also remember seeing somewhere a photo of one built at the permaculture project Graham Bell developed in Scotland, the name of which escapes me at the moment, but I don’t remember where I saw it.  I have been looking around on the Web, and found case studies of chicken/greenhouses here, and here, but none of them are especially informative.  In search of a photo, one link (here) that promised a picture of a chicken/greenhouse, has it so far away in the picture and concealed behind trees as to be entirely useless.

What I am looking for is plans, designs, drawings, as well as articles by people who have built them, tested them, evaluated if they work or not, and who can offer their insights.  A couple of hours spent rummaging through my permaculture books and magazines, and a couple more on Google, have produced virtually nothing.  So, in the belief that I have been missing something, and that actually the world is populated by hundreds of well functioning chicken/greenhouses, I am putting out to you all for your thoughts.

My questions for both permaculture practitioners as well as for any engineers out there who may have thoughts to share are as follows;

• What is the best way to connect them together?  Should I just take the side off the chicken house altogether and replace it with chicken wire, or make vents from the top and the bottom of the hen house coming into the greenhouse, or is there some other way of maximising the effectiveness of the heat exchange?  Presumably the place where the warmth from the chickens enters the greenhouse should be as low down as possible?
• Presumably also the hen house needs to be as insulated as possible, so that any heat generated does go into the greenhouse rather than out through the walls?
• Is it necessary to be able to close the vents at any time so they don’t interact with each other?

So, this is a request for the collective wisdom of the Permaculture movement to rain down on my little chickenhouse…. help me out here.  Of course it might be the case that the ammonia produced by the chickens is such that any growth in the plants is simply burnt off by the accumulation of foul gases, or that if one forgets one summer morning to let the chickens out early enough, they simply roast in a what is unwittingly a highly effective solar oven.  Any thoughts (and in particular photos or design advice) gladly received.