Return to the Garden

Well, I was caught up in the garden...

This is what I came home to after a week away.  It amazes me how well the weeds grow with so little rain.  #1 says they only got a little sprinkle overnight, once the whole week.

All in all though, the garden is doing well.  There is a definite size difference between the front of the garden, where we unloaded the manure last summer, and the back of the garden, which did not get any soil amendments. 

My quad is supposed to be fixed this weekend, which means we'll finally be able to get the barn cleaned out.  With the snow fence granting the birds access to the far end of the garden we'll be able to unload all of the manure there, amending the soil while giving them access to all of the worms and microorganisms they can handle. 

The trick for next year will be creating a pathway to give the birds access to the front side of the garden.  A new summer hen house and yard on the close end of the garden would simplify things, allowing us to rotate the birds from end to end, year by year.  I can't see fitting construction plans into the schedule this summer though.

Even though I had planned to plant a lot more this spring, I'm finding the garden much easier to deal with in it's smaller size.  I'm not nearly so far behind with the weeds this year, and I think overall production will be higher.  Most of the spring veggies are coming out of the greenhouses as companion plants, as will a fair bit of the fall root crops.  The greenhouses allow me to grow more, in less space, with less weeding, than the garden, while feeding the birds and making the soil amending a much easier task.