We have eight Rhode Island Reds and six White Buff chickens. When the garden is fallow, we let them have the run of the fenced in garden, where they dig the hell out of it and poop everywhere. we allow the cover crop [clover and millet] to grow high enough to attract bugs and simply turn them loose. When we are growing veggies we have to be more careful, because they will destroy certain veggies such as tomatoes. The way we find the most success is by interplanting beneficial flowers and plants with our food. It helps deter bugs and makes the garden that much nicer to look at.
For pole beans, simply plant giant sunflowers a month before you plant the beans and or peas and they will afford some shade at high noon and a sturdy base to climb. We'll take inch wide strips of sheet muslin and weave it across ten or twelve sunflower stalks and it will support all of the peas and beans. Plant them four feet or so apart to do this. For the rest of the beans, we simply plant them immediately adjacent to the fence and they climb right up.
For cucumbers and squash, we have 1" X 2" A- frames that we put 6" X 6" concrete reinforcing mesh across. We plant cukes and squash on either side and train the vines up the screen. This gives us more yield per square foot of planted area by going vertical with them, and it keeps the fruits clean and away from ground dwelling pests.
When the plants are all in full blast off mode and producing, and the tomatoes can be partitioned away from the balance of the garden, we let the chickens in to eat buggies all day. That, with a little bit of organic bug spray and neem oil seems to keep most of the buggies away. The only crop we cannot seem to grow without getting decimated by bugs is corn. I'll never grow it here again. What a fucking waste of time that was.
Little sugar pumpkins, acorn squash, zucchini, cukes, spaghetti squash, summer squash, radish, cantaloupes, watermelon, onions [red and indian yellow], carrots, beets, cabbage, lettuce, celery [incredible dark green pungent stalks], five types of bean, two types of peas, leeks, okra, stew tomatoes, sauce tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, collard greens, spinach, and a few other things are waiting to go in to the ground pretty soon. I think the bad heat will break around three weeks from now, so we'll get an early fall/winter garden this year. Along with the herbs we grow, it is enough to feed about eight of us and provides enough extra to can for later. We expect to put up three hundred quarts this season. With three pressure canners we can do it over about four weekends. Without getting crazy about it, you can put up about 40 quarts in a few hours on a Saturday.