Cheap seeds for growing feed plants

At Walmart this week I found a bunch of seed packets on sale. They were $.10 each so I bought some for my chicken feed garden. The downside is that they are last years seeds. However, many seeds are viable for at least 2 years. After that they don't all just die...but your germination rate will drop. The upside is that whatever seeds do germinate and grow, produces plants just as healthy as their non-expired counterparts which the chickens then eat. 

I picked up several packets when I was there. The flowers are just mainly to replace some that the flock have dug up. The pumpkins, tomatoes, squash, lettuce and cucumbers are for feed plants. The herbs and marigolds are to use for the chickens. 

Related reading: How to hack a chicken egg, learn how to use marigolds to make your chickens lay eggs with orange yolks!

Chickens in the garden

I plant a feed garden just for the chickens every year. It still gets taken care of but admittedly, it doesn't get weeded nearly as often as the regular garden. Everything I put in this garden is stuff I will feed the chickens. I buy cheap seeds or replant volunteer plants into this garden. I let a few of the lettuce plants bolt so it reseeds itself. I've gotten fresh lettuce crops all the way into fall that way.

Occasionally I will let a few chickens or guineas in to peck and play. They usually do a number on the weeds and take a bite out of every tomato, but hey...it's their garden! Mostly I pick the veggies and dice them up to throw in the pens. This is a great way to get produce to chickens that aren't free ranged.

By buying the seeds on sale at the end of the season or just choosing the cheap ones at dollar stores, I save a ton of money over buying transplants. If I pay $.25 for a packet of tomato seeds and only a few germinate and grow, I will still get several pounds of feed from each plant. I could buy the name brand seeds like Burpee for $2-$4 a packet. Granted a higher percentage will probably germinate and grow, but I still only need a few plants of each per year. 

That means the rest of the seeds in the packet are waiting till next year where you're now getting germination rates similar to the sale priced seeds...except the original cost was higher. I'd rather spend the same money on a variety of seeds and maybe try a few new things while I'm at it.

By using discount seeds and with minimal work, a chicken garden is a great way to save money on the chickens feed bill!

Want to learn more about using chickens in the garden, and using the garden for the chickens? Check out all my posts on gardening for chickens.

~Lisa

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