With all this warm weather we’ve been having, we have had an ideal chance to get a good start on our vegetable gardens.
One garden space is connected to our chicken yard. After last fall’s first heavy frost when the tomatoes and late beans and zucchini were done, we let the chickens go into the fenced in vegetable garden to clean it up very well. The chickens ate up the old too-mature beans and the frost-damaged green tomatoes. Along with cleaning up the veggies and weeds, they also ate up any insect pests , including insects eggs and that could over winter to cause problems next year.
So with the chickens doing most of the work of cleaning up, it wasn’t much work to pull a few bigger tough stalks and smooth the garden soil out.
Then Bob spread some compost around the area. He used some of the wood shavings from his wood working over the winter, plus old straw bedding from the chicken houses. He spread it around evenly about an inch thick or less, and then rototilled it into the soil. This was a great year for doing this because the soil was dry enough. The structure of the soil can be ruined if it is worked too early while it is wet. He rototilled in one direction and then again at a right angle .
The chickens were let in again to this area to find and eat any quack grass roots (which are a big problem for us) plus any weed seeds or insects eggs that had been exposed to the surface of the soil.
We may let them in again to this area if weeds start growing before we have a chance to plant.
Bye for now,
Judy