Nice weather took me out into the garden yesterday, and I had a plan to move some of the blocks around in the Grow Dome. When I looked more closely, I decided they were better as they were – and pulled up the remains of the peanut plants instead.
The chickens don’t normally come into the Grow Dome, but yesterday they did – and immediately decided that the empty low bed was actually a giant chicken dust bath. They had so much fun getting themselves dirty that I’ve decided to leave that bed empty for the winter for them. Providing a dry dust bath for them when the weather is murky is always problematic – now they have one permanently available, although visits will have to be supervised. (They may look innocent, but moments before this was taken Princess was scratching away in the carrot tub!)
I’ve transplanted sorrel and chard into some of the empty planting holes around the edge of the bed, leaving a couple empty so that the chickens have easy access. They can nibble on the greens if they want to; the plants should be tough enough to survive the chicken treatment.
Once the chickens were done I started clearing out the Grow Dome. The cardboard chips were swept up and plonked on the compost heap. They did their job really well, but they’re a pain to make, so I will replace them with bark chips instead.
And I moved the potting table out and into the sun room, which gives me more room to play with in the Grow Dome, makes it feel less cramped and gives me space to overwinter plants in pots (like the fig) out of the worst of the weather. I found a lot of slug eggs, which the chickens happily disposed of.
easygardener wrote:
...on Sat, Nov 8 '08 (1187 days ago)