FINALLY got our garden dialed in a bit over Memorial Day weekend. The gigantic area James had dug up for me in our field with an excavator turned out to be just way too wet with underground springs, so we had to revamp our plans.
We had a couple of raised beds off our back deck, which were awfully handy, but the chickens had taken over. We lost most of the plants last year to curious little beaks and scratching toes.
We had my little old toyota parked next to the planters on the little parking pad, but we haven't driven it in quite some time, so figured we could use that space for better purposes.
We started by laying down some old feed sacks on the pavement portion, and moving the cement blocks to reform the planter boxes on the parking pad.
We alternated layers of compost, dirt, and 'chicken infused' straw to make a lovely, stinky compost-lasagna.
We also put in a layer of some spent grains from a local brewery in one box, just to see how that worked.
Then we took a break and had some lunch, while our tilling crew went to work.
James's next project was welding up some fencing to keep our chickens from decimating the entire garden. Yes, welding while wearing a Kilt. Apparently keeping his leg hair intact wasn't high on this priority list.
Everything planted and chicken proofed! Been almost a week, and not a single one of those mother cluckers has broken in!! Whoo hoo!!
Here's the before and after: we shifted the raised beds to the pavement, then planted a bunch of veggies along the fence line and in the dirt area.
Will see how it all does! We have tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, pumpkins, sweet peppers, hot peppers, sunflowers, cucumbers, green beans, sweet peas, watermelon, cantaloupe, lettuce, carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, cabbage, strawberries, and rhubarb all crammed in there (only a couple of each type). Most were from seed, but had some tomato, pepper, and cucumber starts from indoors, so we'll see how they handle the transplanting!
James also welded some shelves in the corner of the fencing, so I have some container pots with herbs of all sorts as well!
Willis and Bayou found that project supervision was exhausting work.
Thanks for looking, I can't wait to start seeing some germination! We've had fabulous weather in the low 70's, just lovely!
