Susan,

You mentioned poor soil. If you keep your chickens in one pen or close to it use their droppings, but make sure you compost it first or it will "burn" your plants. If you do that first though it is great for gardens mine produced like a champ this year.

Also watch where you plant pumpkins because mine grew every where this year and it was too close to the yellow squash and got a little cross breeding. Wierd and wasn't tasty at all

Mark