Dh wants to concrete the back garden over but I want a veggie patch and maybe a couple of chickens..please advise me..

[DustyTV]

We live in a terraced house, so garden is not massive. I have always wanted to have a veggie patch and would love to keep a couple of chickens.

Can anyone give me some advice about how to start a veggie patch and could I keep a couple of chickens in such a small garden??

Oh and if anyone can recommend any good books for beginners I would appreciate it

bump

DOnt know about chickens in a small garden, but a veggie patch would def be possible.
Much nicer than having it concreted over - nicer for DCs ro play in, better for wildlife etc.
Why not get some books from your local librbay about growing veg/fruit?

If you have a small garden, then bantams are a possibility - you can get a small 'ark' for them to live in, and they won't murder your veggies like proper sized chooks!

Definite no vote for the concrete - environmental nightmare, and where would you put your compost??

Get DH to put his DIY skills into a couple of raised beds for veggies instead - much easier to weed, and stops small kiddies from trampling everything.

Don't do it! Don't concrete it over, it would be impossible to change your mind and it will look like a passage way.

I have also a terraced house and inherited a well paved back "garden" (or car space) from previous owners, we have spent years trying to find a solution to make it more usable, as we couldn't face paying so much money to remove the concrete behind the bricks. We have spent more £500 pounds in soil just to get fill some flower bed areas. Not to say all the design work/construction to make the bricks look acceptable in such a small space. At the end I have a "patio" that is enjoyable but has come at a price.

Concrete is not exactly a particularly welcoming material particularly in small spaces

Concrete is very, very bad. Growing your own veg is a great thing to do with kids - they'll enjoy eating things they've grown themselves and I think it's really important that they know where veg come from

I know nothing about chickens - there's a whole separate topic for those hen-keeping types I believe

I have found Johns Brookes "Small Gardens" book very helpful.

Agree with Tickle, get your DH to create some raised beds for the veg, its a fab thing to do with kids and tastes great. Really easy to thing to grow from seed are salad leaves, radishes and rocket.
Some ideas/info here
www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/growfruitandveg_index.shtml

I don't want it concreted over, we don't have much grass out there anyway TBH, so I think that the veggie patch and chicken coop will take up all of the room on the grass.

Thanks everyone, I like the idea of raised beds for the veggie patches. I really wanted to get in to it for a while, more so now as food is getting so expensive.
Thanks for the book recommendation MMSAI.

Tickle, thanks, I have had a look at a site about keeping chickens, I didn't know there were so many different kinds.. I only want a couple and I've seen a nice design for a coop that DH can build for me.

How small is your garden?
Ours is only 45 feet and we have four chickens in a converted shed with run and eglu at the back of the garden. There is a small grassed area and patio. I haven't got an actual veg patch but I have grown veg in various ways-
Carrot/tomato/chilli/small fruit trees/herbs in tubs on patio
Runner beans up the fence
Strawberry's in hanging baskets
It is suprising what you can grow in a small space

I've never had a veg. patch before, but I pulled up a couple of lines of pavers out of our patio in early May this year, edged it with rolled strip edging and filled it with compost to make a raised bed. Took about two hours start to finish which includes a brief excursion to Homebase when I realised I'd woefully underestimated the amount of compost I'd need.

I wound string around the edging to divide it into rough one-foot squares after reading online that it was mentally easier to maintain lots of little squares than one dauntingly large expanse & tied little strips of carrier bags on the string to keep the birds off the seed.

Has been a breeze to maintain (loving the not digging it over), and have healthy-looking crops of spinach, beetroot, corn salad, peas, courgette, peppers, basil and more tomatoes than I know what to do with!

If all continues to go well, I'll pull another couple of rows of pavers up next year.

Nothing to add about chickens - except that I'm very jealous!

Go for it!