Overflowing!

Since the sun has come out, the garden has been thriving!

I've been picking kale for what feels like months now and the same plants keep producing.  Last night I picked a huge bucket.

I also picked some sweet peas to bring home - my whole plot smells like sweet peas - they are growing and blooming like crazy!

By the time I got to the garden last night, the sun was on its way down and I didn't have much light to work with.  So, this morning when I went to let the chickens out, I was happily surprised to see tomatoes growing (from the plants I started from seed!).  Let's hope they ripen.

The chickens seemed eager to get out of their run so I let them free-range and decided to clean up my garden a bit.  The nasturtiums were taking over and preventing some of the other seeds I planted from growing so I took out some of the bigger bushes.  All of my spinach had bolted so I cleared that out too and let the chickens snack on it.

So now the garden doesn't look as lush, but I hope that the cucumber seedlings have more room to grow and spread out!  

Second Plot!

After some discussion, we decided that we could use a little more room in the garden.  Luck had it that the plot right next to ours was going to be available July 1st so we jumped on the opportunity!  Because our summer is a bit late, we should be able to get some seeds in the ground still.


On the weekend we installed the rabbit-deterrent fencing.  We only had to do the two ends as the fence shared with our first plot is rabbit-'proof' as is the fence we share with our other neighbour.


I won't bring in any soil this year as the group that had the plot before us put enough down that we will be able to make use of it.  There weren't too many weeds in the plot either (thank goodness because I was not prepared to weed like I did for the first plot!).


The chickens were out free ranging and we managed to scoop up a couple to help us till the plot.  The rooster was not impressed at all - good thing he could not get over our fence or we would have been in big trouble.  It is amazing how quickly he comes running when he hears one of his hens squawking!  He got over it quite quickly and went back to checking in on the other hens as they roamed around the property.  


As for the hens in our plot, they were quite happy to be there (although a door would have made it easier to shoo them in and out of our plot versus catching them and putting them over the fence; they are not the type of hens to just let you pick them up and cuddle).  They had quite a feast on worms, grubs, and other bugs.  They actually got quite comfortable with us and I'm pretty sure they would have eaten out of our hand, if we had something to feed them.

As soon as they would see one of us doing something that looked like we might be turning up the soil, they'd run to us.

We definitely need to work on our chicken-catching skills.  I should have taken some video of us trying to catch them.  We had a good laugh at ourselves.

Slug Homes

Apparently this is what a good slug home looks like:

I let the weeds grow around my square foot boxes and I paid for it - in lettuce.  One of my squares had a couple heads of lettuce eaten down to the dirt.  I also saw slug trails on my kale.  I wasn't too worried about the weeds around my boxes until I pulled up one of the taller weeds and spotted a slug resting beneath it.  As I started to pull up more weeds, I found more slugs.

Hopefully pulling up the weeds will solve some of my slug problems.  I also laid some crushed egg shells around the lettuce squares.

The forecast today was for rain but the morning was beautiful - even hot!  The chickens loved their fresh weeds - after some scratching, some of them settled into the weeds to cool off (I think).

Today there was a creature in the garden that I've never seen in the gardens before...and I've never seen one in the day either.

A little bat!  I thought it might be hurt because it just flew a short distance and then laid in the dirt.  But, it eventually flew away.

My Neighbours

I will admit that part of the reason why I chose the plot I did was because of my neighbours; the chickens.  They are right across from me and make excellent company while I garden.

I throw my buckets of weeds over to them so that they can scratch through them.  I like to wait until they are on the other side of the coop so I can see the rooster 'sprint' when I throw the weeds over - it's hilarious.