Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

cool! so you did try it..it would definitely be a hard mental thing, especially for people (me), who haven't been exposed to , what would be called, exotic food...would love to have at least tried it. just a little bite
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..
Although, I was brought up on ''scrapple", "pudding", filled-mahw(pig)-sp?, mince-meat pie,..all those wonderful pen-dutch concoctions!!..that is exotic to some..
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In front with the flowers I have "Autumn"-sunflowers planted
eggplant & jalapeno's, leaf lettuce
sweet peppers/yellow beans
tomatoes (grape/Heirloom-Mr.Stripey/peach,(from *Sharrons seeds)/supersonic)
cauliflower & broccoli
sugar peas/green beans
the "hill" is actually dirt from the 'row-hole',(behind the mound) that is dug to put debris and animal dirt into throughout the growing season..
zucchini/yellow squash/watermelon/sm. & lrg. pumpkins/cantaloupe/cucumbers
In the fenced area is..garlic/onions/red beets /carrots..then the potato bin..it was fenced off because it was the first things in the garden , started it from seed & sets, didn't want the chickens to get into it.
**we had extended the garden this year..should have made it bigger
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..we preserve a lot of our food, supplement for the chickens & fresh produce is 90% of my diet..it is so expensive and not all that great in the stores...we are really looking forward to this year!!
There are herbs, rhubarb & chamomile planted in the cutting garden( the garden with the lilac.) Also have herbs in pots on the front porch for faster picking..gotta make tofu awesome!!
Do you have a veggie garden?

We do. I should preface this with the fact that my wife is a fine gardener by trade. Her ornamental garden out front looks beautiful and well kept. The veggies out back are less pretty since her messy husband hasn't been keeping up with things as well as he should.



We just recently got finished building this raised bed. Has tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil, radishes, and possibly cilantro if it ever sprouts.



These are the onions, which could really use a weeding. And edging to define the bed. Towards the back are a few tomatoes. Those two tires behind them are my potato tower; we've got several more tires waiting to make it taller as the vines grow out of the medium. And those cardboard scraps you see? Those are from last year's cardboard mulch, which has mostly rotted away and needs to be replaced. Last year, this bed was all cabbages and lettuce, and grew pretty well.



This was the spring brassica bed. The broccoli is bolting; the cauliflower is stunted, but the brussel sprouts towards the back seem to be doing well. They would probably be doing better, but the girls got into the garden and decimated them. Twice.



We're doing this one as a square foot garden. 5 varieties of peppers here so far. The remaining squares will be given over to radishes, carrots, and bush beans. Will follow up with leafy greens after the worst of the summer heat; I gave up my greens bed on the south side of the house so the D.O. could grow some herbs and various ornamentals.



In the foreground are eggplants, and peppers. The t-posts in the back are stakes for tomatoes. (For the tractor/gearheads, that's a troy-bilt junior tiller in the background, that has been repowered with a Yanmar-clone diesel engine.)



In the buckets and containers on the right side, you're seeing peas. We've got about 20 of those. These will be succeeded by Berkley's new "On-Deck" hybrid container corn. This is a wheelchair ramp out front of the house; it's about the only place I can grow stuff that the deer will definitely not venture to eat.



Finally, here's the coop/run. That little splash of green on the right is more peas. That will be replaced by vine/pole beans on this side, and zucchini and malabar spinach on the far side of the run.

So yes. I do have a veggie garden. And its no where near done, and needs mulching and weeding and all sorts of love!
 
We do. I should preface this with the fact that my wife is a fine gardener by trade. Her ornamental garden out front looks beautiful and well kept. The veggies out back are less pretty since her messy husband hasn't been keeping up with things as well as he should.



We just recently got finished building this raised bed. Has tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil, radishes, and possibly cilantro if it ever sprouts.



These are the onions, which could really use a weeding. And edging to define the bed. Towards the back are a few tomatoes. Those two tires behind them are my potato tower; we've got several more tires waiting to make it taller as the vines grow out of the medium. And those cardboard scraps you see? Those are from last year's cardboard mulch, which has mostly rotted away and needs to be replaced. Last year, this bed was all cabbages and lettuce, and grew pretty well.



This was the spring brassica bed. The broccoli is bolting; the cauliflower is stunted, but the brussel sprouts towards the back seem to be doing well. They would probably be doing better, but the girls got into the garden and decimated them. Twice.



We're doing this one as a square foot garden. 5 varieties of peppers here so far. The remaining squares will be given over to radishes, carrots, and bush beans. Will follow up with leafy greens after the worst of the summer heat; I gave up my greens bed on the south side of the house so the D.O. could grow some herbs and various ornamentals.



In the foreground are eggplants, and peppers. The t-posts in the back are stakes for tomatoes. (For the tractor/gearheads, that's a troy-bilt junior tiller in the background, that has been repowered with a Yanmar-clone diesel engine.)



In the buckets and containers on the right side, you're seeing peas. We've got about 20 of those. These will be succeeded by Berkley's new "On-Deck" hybrid container corn. This is a wheelchair ramp out front of the house; it's about the only place I can grow stuff that the deer will definitely not venture to eat.



Finally, here's the coop/run. That little splash of green on the right is more peas. That will be replaced by vine/pole beans on this side, and zucchini and malabar spinach on the far side of the run.

So yes. I do have a veggie garden. And its no where near done, and needs mulching and weeding and all sorts of love!
Hey..it all looks great to me!!
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Time and money..which of course never come at the same time
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...need both to keep/maintain..well, everything!
we used newspaper last year to help keep weeds down in the garden..we have more grass clippings to put over everything this year so we left the paper out. It worked very well, card board would definately work..and I am sure wouldn't breakdown as fast as paper! I like to fully pack my gardens in with plants, it really does also help to keep the weeds down...can make walking through a little tight, but with extending this year..hopefully it will help.
I have done some reading on layer-gardening..they put the beds together like a lasagna...card board/straw/soil/whatever fertiliser you like to work with mixed into the soil. A very interesting concept, you don't till-over the soil, just make these layered-raised beds and in between for walking you just lay cardboard/straw or you can let the grass grow (less work)....If i had a large area that I wanted to plant in, this is the way I would go..it looks really cool cause the people that had done this, did it in a star-pattern...with fruit trees in the middle. I will have to double check which blog that is on...I like how you have your beds and paths for walking..very nice. That raised bed is serious!! Concrete block..wow, that sucker isn't going anywhere!!
Have to keep us appraised on that "container corn"..never heard of it..very interesting!! I would love to grow corn, but it does take a lot of room...
 
I really like the way it looks from the outside!! It does look like a barn..great color!! They have a nice big run too!! Very-very nice!!! Your girls are sure enjoying themselves!!
New and all clean...i look at mine and think UGG! :sick hahaha..it still needs a good spring cleaning..this weather needs to get a little more stable for me to tear things apart & wash them.

Thanks! It still has a lot of work to be done but we're getting there. We're thinking about putting an X like a barn door there on that door to the coop, we still need to frame the windows, put the rules roof on, paint and fence the run, and build the nest boxes. Heck, the walls are STILL not up on the front of the shed side lol. We're just rushing to get the chickens side done and make it look nice. We keep running out of money as we go. It's taking WAY more time and money than we had planned on when we started lol.
 
You explained freeze damage very well. Tonight I was watching the newly hatched chicks and I saw one in the pile was on it's side with it's legs stuck out at what seemed an odd angle. After watching, it was obvious she was just stretched out and sleeping. Another chick was sleeping in a bowl of crumbles, like a tired baby that falls asleep in his high chair. And then there was the "quarterback move", when a chick just walked on top of the others as they were sleeping in order to get into the middle of the pile. Very entertaining, we should start a "chick TV" channel on cable! Definitely more fun than a fireplace.
Thanks! I miss "chick tv", my subscription ran out and now I'm left with "Hens gone wild". That's certainly entertaining too. My leghorn will jump straight up and even over another chicken if the dog barks and spooks her. Unfortunately, she cane easily fly-jump onto the top of the fence...
Speaking of 'up-cycling'.... a bit of second hand bragging to do here. We recently tore down an old shed that the floor had gone bad in. We had hoped to save a lot of the plank wood in the roof, because it looked like nice wide old boards, but on tearing it apart we found that most of it was much shorter pieces (often only spanned 1 truss at 24") so very little we could use, it appears to have been made out of old packing crates, with multiple pieces still having shipping labels on it from the 1950s. We had it stacked to be burnt but I told a good friend of mine about it since I know he likes doing small scale projects. Well, my buddy and his wife showed up to get a bunch of these boards to use for a cellar entry repair and in digging through the pile he found the old doors DH had removed from the shed before we started taking it down. He took a bunch of the boards and both of the doors (it was a double barn door style opening, so 2 halves) He decided to not tear apart the doors, but rather he made them into a decorative piece for his garden fence area... I just love how he did it... He used a 2nd scrap board to cut large squares out of... he traced the top of the plant containers onto the pieces and cut them out slightly smaller... those circles he cut in half to create the flats for some of the other shelves. The shelf supports were also cut out of the same boards, and he supported the base in the back with some more cut out boards. The left side of the door is attached to the existing fence also. He sent me an email to show the end result... I loved it so had to share it... He did tell me I can't have my doors back though!! :gig
That's awesome!
Funny how that works. The DO planted hostas around our coop and run to hide the bottom boards, and they look just lovely... ..till you look up close and see that all the leaves that were up against the wires have been savaged. I actually have several plants INSIDE our run that are still alive. They haven't been able to kill the pitiful azalea that we haven't managed to kill or move yet. They DID try to kill the day lillies, but those grow too fast for them to keep up. And there's a lone peony in the run that they seem to ignore. Maybe it tastes bad? I was happier to find that they'll eat creeping charlie. I can't seem to eradicate it from the garden. Having a tought time keeping it out of the beds even. But there's not a bit of it in the run!
Mine enjoyed the hosta and the Bleeding heart I put in last year. Poo. Looking today on Craigslist for some cheap fencing to put around my raised gardens. I may have lost the battle, but I will not lose the war!
 
Feeling stupid here..

I am missing a chick out of the kitchen brooder,,,,this is. A bright yellow chick and I can not find it.

I really did not want to tear my kitchen apart today
 
Although I don't have any room to talk.....

DH and I spent nearly an hour the other evening searching for a chick we thought hadn't gone back in the coop after free ranging....

until DH finally saw it perched overhead on a the power cord for the Christmas light string we have strung through the rafters inside of the coop! It was happily swaying back and forth like a circus performer on a trapeze line! Happily watching us doing our stupid human tricks!
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I can only imagine the conversation in the coop amongst the birds....
perpetrator..... "Hey, bro!! Watch this!.... I'm gonna make them think I ran away and got eaten!"
bro..... "Naahhh... they'll never fall for that, they'll see you right away!"
perpetrator.... "Nope, I'll betcha first dibs on the good scratch tomorrow that they won't be smart enough to look up!!"
bro.... "you're on!"

Guess who won the bet?
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