What did you do in the garden today?

[Molpet]

I have been battling mice. Bait works to some extent but there are still some mice. None in the house just in the garage and barn. Watching home remedies. Seems baking soda and flour are popular as is flour and plaster of Paris. I mixed some yesterday and again today. Trying both recipes. The mice ate some last night. Skeptical of home remedies but worth a try.

I tried baking soda and corn meal... they weren't going in the traps anymore, ended up with putting bait out. Still took a couple weeks before I started finding dead ones.

 

[Sally PB]

Watching home remedies. Seems baking soda and flour are popular as is flour and plaster of Paris. I mixed some yesterday and again today. Trying both recipes. The mice ate some last night. Skeptical of home remedies but worth a try.

Let us know how it goes, please. I battle mice in the house and the green house.

 

[member 655102]

I wasn’t planning on doing anything in the garden today but my birds had other plans in store for me when they decided to scatter the neatly stacked pile of dead tomato plants that I had in the corner all over the ground for me to clean up…:

It’s been a balmy February here so far, I’ll say…All the snow and ice has already melted and yet the grass still isn’t growing. It kinda makes me worry about how hot this summer is going to be…

 

[gtaus]

I still have a 3 bin compost system for other compost. That's where the poop from the coop goes, and most kitchen scraps. We have a compost bucket on the counter, and it gets everything, including stuff I wouldn't give the chickens, like coffee grounds and moldy vegetable bits.

I dump all the chicken poo and coop litter right into the chicken run. It all gets mixed in with the organics. But I use the deep bedding method and only clean out the coop twice a year.

I have separate pallet compost bins for moldy stuff and things I know the chickens should not eat.

I can understand not having enough room on the counter for both chicken scraps and other compost waste. In my house, we have one ice cream pail on the counter for chicken scraps and that gets almost all our kitchen waste and leftovers. If we have something that I cannot feed to the chickens, but is good for the compost bins, then we will just put that in a separate bowl to take outside - like in a few hours because we don't have room on the counter to have buckets for everything, either.

I do the Berkeley hot rot method for composting in the 3 bin pile. The pile is pretty big right now, and it's still several weeks before I'll go turn it. Yeah, it's a lot of labor. I do get a lot of compost out of it, so I count it as worthwhile.

I have a 5-bin pallet compost system that I built years ago. I used to turn the piles every once in a while, but never got into all the work required for hot composting. Good for you if you can. It's a lot of work turning those piles.

I let the chickens do all the composting for me. Like I said, it might take 3-4 months to breakdown in place in the chicken run, but I have so much composted material in there finished and ready to harvest, that it is never an issue for me.

For me, that's the real trick to composting. Just make more than you can use and bank the rest in place until you need it. It only seems to get better with age, anyway.

But, @gtaus, I'm a teensy bit jealous of your chicken run compost! Yours looks better than mine!

It's a great system where the chickens do most of the work for me. But I could not be happier with the results of the chicken run compost system I made after reading many threads here on BYC forums and watching numerous YouTube videos on the subject as well.

I really got into mass amounts of composting and built a cement mixer compost sifter which I am sure you have seen, but here it is again for others who might not know about it. It cost me just over $200 to make it with brand new cement mixer about 3 years ago. But it was one of those investments that paid for itself in about 4 hours. I calculated that I can sift out about $60 worth of finished compost per hour by myself, with minimal effort.

 

[Sally PB]

built a cement mixer compost sifter

That is the coolest garden gadget. I love it every time you post pictures of it.

 

[gtaus]

I have both a bin and a pile of leaves for compost and the chicken one is more fun to watch
The best part is when they're digging around and reveal the compost under the leaves

One fall I was dumping in loads and loads of leaves into the chicken run. While I was there, I did a quick count of my chickens and came up 2 short.

So, I'm thinking that maybe they escaped when I opened the gate to bring in the bins full of leaves. I am looking around the yard, and the chicken run and cannot find them. Then I noticed the leaves in the big pile rustling and out popped the two chickens. It's like they dove right into the leaves and went for a swim!

Chicken TV at its best!

 

[gtaus]

Snow is lava.

It would appear so! You don't need a fence with my chickens, just a snow barrier that they refuse to cross.

 

[Nym]

Microbes in the soil causes our brain to release serotonin
https://permaculture.com.au/why-gardening-makes-you-happy-and-cures-depression/#:~:text=Getting your hands dirty in,and strengthens the immune system.

Soil for the soul!

 

[WthrLady]

It would appear so! You don't need a fence with my chickens, just a snow barrier that they refuse to cross.

Except for this intrepid little scout

 

[Sammster]

When it rains, it pours... Dealing with a sick chicken (bad sour crop?), an injured duck (broken toe? Bumble foot?), and a horse with nose cancer (we think). All within 24 hours. Sigh...

Oh, and the weather turned cold and crappy again.

Oh, TJ. I am sorry