July 11, 2011

Wow, it's been a bit since I posted, so I'm throwing one together tonight.  It's going to be brief however, since we're going camping for the first time this season and I won't be around to do anything about my garden for a few days.  Such is life as everything's bolting.

Speaking of everything bolting, today's post is kind of about it.  Since I'm horrible at weeding, we've had massive weeds growing up. Not so much the dandelions, even though we do have some of those, but others I can't name. 

The good news is that these weeds are very popular with the chickens.  Not only do they eat the leaves, but sometimes they'll actually pick apart the stems.  Very cool.  Even cooler is when I pull one out, roots and all, and stick them through an upper portion of the chicken wire in the arc.  It ends up hanging down into the arc and the girls have a blast pecking away at it. I've even seen them jump to reach a higher leaf.  Chicken TV!  Anyway, here's my little guy feeding weeds to the chickens.

You can see  the girls have a field day with the weeds.  If only I could be confident that they'd only eat the weeds if I let them loose in my strawberry patch, where there are weeds growing up along the fence line something fierce.  I've just got to take 15 minutes a day and weed.  It worked in our front yard when I used a weed popper to basically clear our yard of weeds a few years ago.

Fast forwarding to today, I was deep watering the garden for the camping trip bumping up against a 7 foot tall mustard green plant, dropping yellow leaves and who knows what seeds into the fall garden, when I had an idea.  I ripped it out, knocked some of the dirt off the root ball and stuffed it into the chicken coop.  It took up most of the space and the girls went to town!

And here's the girls munching away on it.

It's a good thing they love weeds as they're grass foraging has been curtailed since I finally mowed the back yard.  I hadn't really needed to since they do a pretty good job keeping the grass short.  Frankly I wouldn't have cut it except there are places I just can't put the arc. hehe.

So, what are you doing with all your weeds? Composting them? Putting them in your yard waste? Or feeding them to your chickens? I love comments and will be confirming them while I'm away assuming I get cell service.

Enjoy your garden!