What did you do in the garden today?

[akroberts1085]

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Looks like bird houses and dessert. Butter cinnamon sugar poured on the acorn squash and put in the oven and baked .

 

[karenerwin]

We got a little more rain today. The high was 77. Almost felt cold after the extreme heat we had. I got out to the farm garden and got a lot of weed eating done

 

[littledog]

my crazy busy time at work is the same time everything wants to ripen

Oh man, same here! I harvested everything I could today, because I have to work 12-hour days for the next 10 days, except for next Saturday - which I'm sure will be spent catching up on laundry, dishes, errands, etc.

What are you planning on doing with your bajillion cherry tomatoes?

I like putting them on skewers with other veggies and grilling them, this probably won't use up as many as you need to, though.

 

[littledog]

Here is a quick picture of my backyard setup of chickens and raised garden beds...

Wow, nice setup! What is the wooden frame thing in the chicken run? It looks like a small compost bin, or is it a dust-bath station?

 

[gtaus]

I like putting them [cherry tomatoes] on skewers with other veggies and grilling them, this probably won't use up as many as you need to, though.

Love those kabobs. We do that as well.

Wow, nice setup! What is the wooden frame thing in the chicken run? It looks like a small compost bin, or is it a dust-bath station?

When I first got my chicken run built, it was full of beautiful grass. If only it could stay that way forever! At that time, I was reading up on how great it is for chickens to make compost.

I built a compost bin out of pallets inside the run. The front of the compost bin is a half pallet so the chickens can easily jump in and out of the compost bin. I took the other half of the front pallet and put it on top the compost bin. The chickens love to sit up there and catch some sun rays on a nice day. If it gets too hot, they like to go into the compost bin and sit in the shade of that top piece.

Towards the end of that first summer, the chickens had more or less ripped up all the grass leaving nothing much more than dirt on the ground. Of course, dirt turns to mud when it rains. I don't want my chickens walking around in mud. So, I decided to convert my chicken run into a chicken run composting system. I now dump all my leaves, grass clippings, weeds from the garden, and just about anything else organic into the run. I have 3 acres of woods and lawn on a lake, so I have lots of organic matter to fill the chicken run. Nothing organic leaves my property.

As much as I loved the chicken run full of beautiful green grass, looking at 12-18 inches of compost in the making is even more rewarding. I had a visiting neighbor come over last year and she fell in love with the chicken run composting system. As a fellow gardener, she understood I was making black gold compost in the run.

The chickens love to scratch and peck for food in all the chicken run litter, breaking it down even faster, and turning it into usable compost in a few months. The compost is a living system, full of tasty bugs and juicy worms. My commercial feed bill is about half of my winter feed costs. The chickens love the conversion to a composting run.

I harvest hundreds of dollars worth of compost out of my chicken run in the spring and late fall. I sift it with the cement mixer compost sifter and top off my raised beds. This fall, I am planning on building two new pallet wood hügelkultur raised beds and will top fill them with a mix of topsoil and chicken run compost mixed 1:1.

I kept the original pallet compost bin in the chicken run because the chickens still use it as furniture. They love sitting up there and looking around. For a dust bath, they just dig a hole in the compost litter and bathe in it. On a hot day, I see them digging holes to get down to cooler litter and then sitting in the hole to cool off. Like dogs will dig a hole to lay down in and cool themselves.

It's good to hear you like my setup. Thank you. Each year I add a few more raised garden beds, grow more food, and enjoy my chickens for both eggs and composting.

 

[littledog]

Dahlias are blooming!

Others are just about to bloom - can't wait to see what these tall ones are!

So grateful to @Sueby for sending me such a wonderful variety of these beauties!

Today's harvest:

The grapes were just the most easily-accessible in the 15 minutes before I had to get ready for work. There are tons more, I hope to have time to really go through them before the birds eat them.
I also picked some blueberries, but didn't have a lot, just enough to toss in the fruit salad.

I've been getting lots of cukes and zucchini and a few carrots, butternut squash and tomatoes are developing:

The last of the lettuce, better pick it before it bolts.

Tomatoes are starting to fruit, one plant is almost ready - I pruned and tied them up today, I'd neglected them a couple weeks too long and had to prune off some flowers, but I should still get plenty.

Finally, here are the big babies: The left-hand one and the one next to him I'm sure are cockerels, the one all the way on the right I'm not sure about, and the other four I'm pretty sure are hens.

 

[Sueby]

Dahlias are blooming!

Yay!! Thanks for sharing pics!

 

[littledog]

Nothing organic leaves my property.

Same here! It's just nonsensical to me to create waste, but at the same time buy soil or compost that I can make out of that same waste with a little bit of time and work - still, no judgment on people whose living situation doesn't allow the space.

Wait, that's not 100% true - I am on city sewer and do flush the toilet! But my local waste treatment plant does compost the solids after treating it with a UV system, baking it at high temps, and then making it available for free to anyone who drives up to their shed to fill their buckets. So I guess I couldn't say everything I use could be certified "organic", but I could possibly claim I use all the organic material we produce.

 

[Farmer13]

Looking for a fun new pepper to grow we found this little jewel, it fits in everywhere.

https://www.rareseeds.com/pepper-hot-jigsaw

 

[littledog]

Yay!! Thanks for sharing pics!

Thank YOU! You're the one responsible for these beauties! I love them so much.