Just a few days after I posted about our garden last month I went to water the garden only to find 2 completely empty boxes. The hens not only ate all the plants but took dirt baths and so messed up all of the seeds. Needless to say, they’ve lost their freedom of roaming the yard unless we are actually out there with them or until we get a fence up around the garden.
I headed down to the local feed store and bought a few transplants to restart us.
I have 2 boxes that have broccoli, cabbage, kale beets and swiss chard at one end.
The one thing the chickens didn’t touch was the cauliflower from my friend. So these 23 plants are looking great. Any wonderful recipes you want to share?
We planted a bed of garlic and it’s coming up. We also planted a bed of onions. Half of the bed was planted with a bundle of transplants from the store and the other half was planted with seeds directly in the bed. I had started some seeds in a container but we got a huge thunderstorm and downed them in the contained. The few that survived have been planted in the bed.
One of our tomato plants is making a come back. It has several tomatoes on it. We’ll let it go until we get a freeze. The tomato plant that I planted in a pot has already given us a tomato for our Friday night pizza.
Our sweet potato patch is still going strong. It will be fun to have fresh sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving.
Our lemons are still ripening and we’ve been having lemonade daily. I’ve heard you can dehydrate the rinds and I think I’m going to try that. I tried freezing some zest and it didn’t work out so well so maybe dehydrating zest is the way to go.
We’ve never had a pest problem with our blueberries….until now. I found this creepy looking caterpillar on all of our plants. I’ve tried to identify it with no luck. So if you know what it is please let me know. I went ahead and sprayed it with bt. Our crazy blueberries have a few blooms on the plants. I’m sure it has something to to with the 50 degree weather followed by the 90 degree weather we a couple of weeks ago.
Our Mimosa tree is just beautiful right now. I love coming home and being greeted with this.
The seed pods remind me of Japanese lanterns.
Is anything happening in your garden these days?
This post is shared at Clever Chicks Blog Hop,
Patty
Monday 12th of November 2012
Goodness, I love chickens but they sure can do damage to the garden. Several years ago we started a fall garden and it took the chickens less than half a day to completely wipe it out. I didn’t realize what had happened until it was too late.
SchneiderPeeps
Wednesday 14th of November 2012
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has been deceived by those lovely animals. They didn't do much damage to the spring/summer garden so I thought we'd be ok. But I guess they really like those fresh greens.
Rachel E.
Monday 12th of November 2012
HICKORY TUSSOCK MOTH is the closest I could come to for your caterpillars. But, who knows.
You garden looks pretty good. Anything from the garden is better than nothing. Right?
SchneiderPeeps
Wednesday 14th of November 2012
Thanks, Rachel. My kids told me they are all over the outside of the chicken house and on the fence. As long as they stay off of my edible plants we'll be ok.