Thankyou! We are subtropical, so I will need to start in the greenhouse or make a poly tunnel and build a separate raised bed for it. I like being able to grow most of what we consume, at least I know that it is completely free of pesticides, herbicides or other nasty chemicals.
Yes, I've read this article. But I've also read other much longer reports of studies showing that the viral load drops to almost nil over time. I kept a closed flock of only three hens for two years to try to avoid any new infection.
Turmeric requires constant humidity and damp soil. If the soil or air is too dry, the rhizome shrivels and doesn't reproduce. It can take a ton of rain. I'd say keep the humidity in your tunnel at least 70% if you want it to thrive. In the muggy SE US, this shouldn't be too hard
Mine like lawnmower clippings, carrot tops, Swiss chard, beet greens, and baby spinach (wilted). They love fruit including grapes, wild strawberries, cantaloupe pulp with seeds, watermelon, and tomatoes. When I offer ripe bits of tomatoes it's as if I were throwing candy at children.I've found out there's a few things they don't like:
Ginger. Big turn off. Neither fresh nor dried powder. Which is too bad because it has excellent antifungal, antibacterial and antioxidant properties. Similar to turmeric though, and they are fine with turmeric so I'll stick with that.
Cauliflower. I mixed some chopped cauliflower in with their feed the other day and they left it on the ground.
Too many vegetables in general. I usually mix in a bit of chopped veg of whatever I'm making for lunch into their afternoon meal. They are ok with a carrot, they like sweet potato and cassava -- but not too much. Plantains they devour though, which is good for both their nutrition and my costs as we grow plantains all year. But if the mix is more than, say, 20-25% vegetable (eyeballing it), they don't eat enthusiastically at all, and go off to forage.
They don't eat any raw vegetable except tomato and cucumber. No lettuce, no spinach, no radishes, no chard, no broccoli. Nada.
However, this morning I mixed in a bit of boiled hamburger meat and had to break up two tussles among the cockerels over it.
We have been cutting back a lot of rampant overgrowth and pruning trees lately, so they are hunting bugs galore. Crops are always full at bedtime. They are getting plenty of protein, but meat and fish are still their favorite things that I serve.
I see other people serving up elaborate salads to their chickens and I'm like. That doesn't fly here at all.
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Tree pruning. Native trees like this provide shade, habitat, and moisture control for our planted cultivars like banana, citrus, and heirloom cacao. But the lower branches of this tree are infested with parasitic epiphytes which drop onto our cultivars spreading disease. So instead of cutting down the whole tree, we carefully trim the offending branches. All the wood and foliage we loosely organize into debris piles that encourage mycelia colonies in the soil. The chickens, if course, feast on all the insects that come to the pile for food and shelter.
I have to throw a bunch of tomatoes in different directions. Still a bunch of pushing and shoving.... it's like the TV shows when the doors open on black Friday
Happens in real life, too… that’s why I haven’t participated in >10 years!
We will still need to supplement with watering, and I was wondering if keeping a pan of water in there, with the heat from the sun would create more steady humidity. Something to try, anyway.
