Your 2026 Garden

[Jenbirdee]

Do you need me to send you some dandelion seeds? We spray ours, but the farmer fields don't keep up with theirs, so it's a losing battle.

lol thanks but no , we have PLENTY. The leaves are a favorite for my Geese. The flowers go to my daughter’s Guinea pigs. And I use the roots to make medicinal tea. All I have to do is leave one tiny piece of the root in the ground and it will grow back.

 

[StarOnFire59]

You would think grapes and blackberries would be high enough off the ground to be out of their reach but Lilac and especially Barracuda are determined young snots. This might also explain the marks on some of the apples and peaches hanging from the lower branches, and here I was suspecting wild birds.

We had to wire off the rafters in the hen house. Those little Bantams kept flying up there. One, I didn't want to get pooped on from above, and two, I was afraid a couple of them might get broken legs. P'Eggy was the first to fly up there. She is the lightest weight & most aerodynamic of the three. The others were not to be outdone by her. They teetered up there until I sent my son in with hardware cloth to fence off the rafter area. I occasionally see them looking up there like, Why? Why not? Silly birds!

 

[jxp]

Barracuda likes to perch on top of the greenhouse. It's ~7' (~2m) tall. The privacy fence is only 6' tall. I live in fear of the day she decides to fly up there and down the other side (grass is always greener and all that). My Great Pyrenees dogs live up to their breed reputation of being great livestock guardians. The neighbor next door has a yappy snarling Pomeranian while the one behind has a pit bull.

 

[StarOnFire59]

Barracuda likes to perch on top of the greenhouse. It's ~7' (~2m) tall. The privacy fence is only 6' tall. I live in fear of the day she decides to fly up there and down the other side (grass is always greener and all that). My Great Pyrenees dogs live up to their breed reputation of being great livestock guardians. The neighbor next door has a yappy snarling Pomeranian while the one behind has a pit bull.

One of several reasons I don't free range. 4 houses on my fence line & they all have dogs; mostly large ones. Rottweiler, German Shepherd, & a Bloodhound or Great Dane are the large ones. There's a couple of smaller ones too. Then there's the feral cats, large squirrels & a couple of hawks live in a tree 2 houses to the west.
The 3 Bantam hens I currently have live in a 9' x12' coop with a 6' x 6' covered run. Before we acquire 3 more Bantams we will be adding a 9' x 6' run on the other side of the coop. That makes the limit of 6 hens allowed by the town's regulations.