One Benefit of Having Urban Chickens? They Manufacture Some Great Garden Fertilizer.

By Robert Wilonsky Thu., May 7 2009 at 12:01 PM

Categories: News

Courtesy Leslie Finical Halleck

This would be Leslie's Polish hen Phyllis.

Friend of the show Leslie Halleck is a horticulturist of some renown who chronicles her "Adventures in Urban Organic Gardening..." on her blog GrowLively. She's also general manager at North Haven Gardens and a veggie test-gardener for Organic Gardening magazine. Add all that together, and that's how she wound up in this morning's New York Times in a story headlined ... "The Manure Chronicles," part of Minneapolis-based writer Michael Tortorello's The Starter Garden series for the Old Gray Lady. Writes Tortorello of nature's fertillizer:

Many gardeners are holding their noses and going closer to the source. "More and more people are keeping traditional farm animals in urban settings now," said Leslie Finical Halleck, a horticulturist and garden blogger in Dallas who is also the general manager of an independent garden center. "I was talking to my friend Julie the other day and she said, 'Do you want to take chicken poop home with you?' And I said, 'Of course I do!' This is what we talk about now."

Of late, Leslie -- who, yes, is married to one Sean Halleck of Chomsky -- has been chronicling life with her urban chickens, and she tells Unfair Park that next week, matter of fact, North Haven Gardens will start carrying chicken supplies and coops for those so interested. And come May 23 at 3 p.m., the joint will host Dan Probst of Bageniece Farms, who, she offers, "will talk about how to keep urban backyard chickens." Oh, Schutze ...

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