Here is a happy thing to find when you are turning over your garden!
Worm
Worms are good for the soil, aerating and fertilizing. I was glad to see a few of these little critters as I took advantage of the nice weather the other day to turn over the garden area. (Turning over a garden with a shovel is also a good workout, but I have to admit I did the digging after a day of rain, so the ground was pretty easy to dig.) I also put down some compost, sand, and a layer of garden soil from the hardware store. Then I covered the whole thing with black plastic until I’m ready to plant (we could still have a freeze or two).
Turned and enriched garden area.Garden area covered in black plastic to keep the weeds down until I can plant.
But not bitten by a hen; our chicks aren’t hatched yet (or even laid), but there are several fields and yards around that are awash in gentle purple waves.
Field of henbit
I believe the plants responsible for this breath of spring are called “henbit”, and it turns out they are edible and chickens love them! I think we have one or two in the yard, but I’m seriously thinking of obtaining some seeds. It may seem a little strange to sow “weed” seeds, but it wouldn’t be a first for us. Our goal with the yard is to have low-maintenance native species, which some consider “weeds”. We’ve sown clover and native grass seeds, so a few henbit seeds wouldn’t be amiss!
So today I started clearing the area where I want to put my garden. It is in the middle of the Chicken Fort Knox rotating runs. (I have three runs, one of which will be the garden, and I plan to rotate which areas the chickens have access to so they don’t completely clear out the runs, and have some enrichment activities when a new run is opened. Or go hog wild when I let them turn over my garden. Hehe.) I started with the hoe, chopping out the weeds and grass. This is great exercise, let me tell you what. Suddenly I feel a “clunk.”
I had hit a rock. No biggie. Turning over dirt in a place that has not been turned over before, that can be expected. I dug around the rock, lifted it up, and carried it over to the retaining wall I’m setting up by the side of the house.
Clunk. This time it was a brick. Easy. Bricks are easy to dig out.
Clunk. Are you kidding me? Clunk, clunk, clunk. How big is this thing? This is how big:
Rock in the garden
Ok, so it is hard to tell from that picture. How about this one?
leftover concrete “rock”
That in the wheelbarrow is leftover concrete that was dumped in the field, probably when the house was built. It is approximately 2 feet by 3 feet. I can’t estimate the weight, but it was fairly thin (2-3″?). But in the middle of my garden. Now we have a few large rocks on the property that are native stone. Picking up large stones is not realistic or safe, so I tip them up using levers, and then tip them into my handy-dandy-favorite-wheel-barrow-ever, and roll the thing where I need it to go. Still hard work, but not back breaking (literally). I have been slowing moving rocks and making a path by the side of the house. This is definitely not native stone, but the back was nice and flat, so I hauled it over to the side of the house and shored it up with some of the dug up bricks, and it is now a stepping stone.
So when life hands you rocks, make a path! (Or a retaining wall. That works too.)
I have winter garlic sprouting up! It is very exciting to see the shoots of green coming up from where I planted them. They won’t be ready to harvest until late spring or early summer, when the green wilts and turns yellow, but so encouraging.
Apparently nothing eats garlic leaves either, so I planted them outside the chicken runs. Once the coop is done, we will set up three runs, with the middle section as my garden. My plants will be protected from rabbits and deer, and have natural bug exterminators roaming the perimeter! (Chickens love bugs, but also garden plants, so they will only be let into the garden when harvest is over.)
Critters and Craft 