Wednesday, February 1, 2012

January Gardens.

I must say that I was, am, a bit disapointed with the gardens.  Not enough to get out there and do more with them but still...We had plenty to eat from them but if I was feeding a family some of them would have gone hungry a few times. 
And I haven't been using all of what I picked either.  I really need to get right on top of the excess stuff and preserve it while it is at it's peak, not wait a couple of weeks and think, "yeah, I should have done that, here chookie..."
I did lose a lot, some to escapee chooks, a lot to the heat.  We had some HOT days and not a lot of small stuff survived.  The chooks ate everything from the lettuce bed including most of the silverbeet, the heat shriveled up any seedlings that were out there, grass smothered the melons and pumpkins and a mouse kept eating the corn as it was planted.  I am working on trying to catch that but he is tricky. 
Anyway, there isn't a lot out there but hopefully I can get things together this month and get things back to how they should be.

I know I can have lush looking, full of good to eat garden beds.  Been there, done that, need to, WILL,  get there again.

4 comments:

  1. I have never understood how your chickens escape. And, I have always wanted to ask but have not because I did not want to sound critical, which I am not. BUT, how do they escape?

    Think of it this way--if you had more people to feed, you would have more people to help tend to things unless they were toddlers and infants. Or, maybe not...lol.

    Some people here in the Southern US put shades over things to keep the sun and heat away. I think your tropical climate is probably much hotter.

    I am always impressed with what you accomplish!

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  2. Thankyou Linda, you always say things that make me feel better about what I do.
    The chooks escape for different reasons...sometimes *someone* doesn't shut gates properly, sometimes they fly up the 6ft fence and then over the top. We do cut a wing but some still manage to flap up and over. Sometimes the wind blows a gate open even though I *know* that I have shut it properly...different reasons usually *someones* fault. haha.

    Ask what you want, I don't take questions as a critical thing, just someone interested in knowing.

    Barb.

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  3. The heat is what has prompted us to build a shade cloth veggie hut. No shriveled seedlings / plants there - my only complaint is that at 9 X 4 mtrs it's not big enough to contain the growth that's happening inside LOL

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  4. Barb,
    When I was so ill, I went out one morning at 8:30 and was greeted by hens by the back door. I was so shocked that I had failed to lock them away. Either that, or they learned to unlock the door latch. Thankfully, I had nothing for them to destroy that was not already destroyed. Mine have a 6 foot fence across the back and along one side of the yard. When they were about 10 months old and I stayed out there with them when they were out of their pen, I saw them looking up. I threw things at the fence to make them afraid of the fence. Now, they never look up, try to fly over even though I will not clip their wings. They don't jump down the four foot retaining wall to the street. They will walk through a breech in a short two foot length of fence, but they never fly two feet up. I don't know if the breed makes a difference. They are RIR and there is no rooster. Fortunately, I have never forgotten but that one time. Fortunately, the raccoon that has returned did not get them. It seems I am lucky on many counts. But, I don't have lots of vegetables for them to destroy.

    They don't even walk from the front to back yard, and there are no barriers. Oh, occasionally, they will get under the shrubs around the front of the house, but never go near the curb or the yard next door, both easily accessible.

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