Saturday in the Garden – Planted some lettuce and radishes, integrated chicken flocks

I finally spent some time in my garden this week.  It took me half a day (and some seriously sore muscles) to just weed and trim the area around the raised beds. It was a certified disaster. It looks a million times better than it did earlier this week.

Cleaning up the area re-energized me and I planted a bunch of lettuce and radishes this week. 45 days and we’ll have some of that goodness, if all goes as planned. The kids even planted a few rows. I gave them some basic instructions and let them “grow” for it. We’ll see how it goes. 🙂

I finally took the 10 minutes I needed and added some string to the snap peas. They now have something to climb up. Climb baby, climb.

I put a fence around the lettuce that was being eaten mysteriously. We’ll see if this helps. I think we have a bunny sneaking in. . .

And then I found the girls in my flower bed. . . again. AGAIN! Gahhh! I can’t be too mad at them, they are doing what their instincts are telling them. And apparently they prefer romaine to red leaf lettuce.+

And while I was adding the labels and cropping this photo, the chickens went back for more. Those stinkers!!! I so need to put up a fence around the other lettuce or I’ll never grow a thing.

I added a tomato cage to my tomato plant before it gets too big.

My strawberries are starting to turn red. . . I had two almost ripe. And my kids picked them. Sigh. Between the kids and the chickens I’m fighting a losing battle. 🙂

They are constantly on the prowl . . .what takes weeks to grow will be devoured in less than an hour. I’d bet money on it.

With all the rain we’ve had lately we found some massive earth worms under rocks today. The kids fed them to the chickens.

This particular worm was gi-normous. It lived a nice long life before ending up in the belly of our chickens. Which I suppose will ultimately end up in our eggs. And then our bellies. That’s the life of an urban farmer. Grossed out yet? I sort of am, but still plan on having an omelet in the morning. 🙂

My little farmer girl. She’s chasing chickens.

These are our baby chickens. Look how big they are getting! It’s so funny to think that my daughter, who is two, probably can’t remember a time when she didn’t have chickens in the backyard with her. It’s just her norm and I love that. She acts like the mother hen, I have no idea where she gets it from.

Our chickens are now officially 12 weeks old! Can’t believe how much they have grown. See our first baby chicks post here.  A couple weeks ago we put the baby chicks in the hen house at night. They slept through the night with no problem and the older flock and baby flock are now ONE flock! Wahoo. We did have a little transition, before this big leap, where we put the little girls in the big coop inside a smaller “coop” and I think this helped with the seamless transition.

Even though the flock is integrated into one, the baby chicks still really stick together. They flock together you could say. They are like a gang of hoodlums, prowling the town for worms and grass. We let them run around the yard during the day – and getting them back into the coop is a comical event – can you imagine trying to herd chickens? We look like fools. They are much faster than me. With the older hens, all I have to do is tap on the “scratch” bin and they run right into the coop and I reward them with scratch (a treat for chickens) – I’m hoping I can train the littles in this same practice. It would make my life a whole lot easier.

So that’s what’s happening in my backyard. Humor me and tell me what’s happening in yours. 

What’s going on in your yard this week?