We stretched a roll of wire out in a loop around their gate. It's not much, but better than nothing. A little bit of green on a cool spring day.
We planted yellow pencil pod beans in a rectangle around the hugelkultur bed, and two rows of white navy beans on the inside.
Planted two rows of red mangels in the garden, and a few in the bed, for next year's seed. Planted two rows of carrots, and two rows of beets.
Got a load of firewood from the edge of our property along the logging trail. The loggers wiped out a bunch of small trees along the trail when they were clearing snow.
I picked a big bunch of dandelion buds for supper tonight. Cooked them with fresh chives from the perennial bed, garlic and potatoes. Delish!
My hens get nutso when they are not allowed out of their pen. that would be a good idea for a bit of freedom for them.
ReplyDeleteI read that ducks, unlike chickens, will leave plants in the garden alone. They don't munch on plants and don't scratch them up like chickens.
Dandelion buds. I need pictures. Do you eat the green part under the yellow? What do they taste like?
Their pen is big enough that they really aren't lacking freedom, but with the lack of rain, things are slow to grow.
DeleteDucks and geese are herbivores, preferring young tender plants. They are supposedly great for weeding crops and fields about mid season, as they leave the older plants alone and guzzle up all of the new growth. Since I'm expecting the peas to start sprouting any day now, I banned them from the garden, because those young tender pea shoots will make a delicious snack for the birds.
The turkey, as I learned last year, will scratch and dig worse than a chicken, even digging up all of the onions and eating them.
The dandelion bud is the flower, before it opens. I pop them off at the top of the stem, so yes, we do eat the green part. They freeze well, and I usually throw a handful in a pot of stew through the winter. They don't really have a strong flavour of their own, they just kind of taste like whatever you're cooking them with. They're my favourite part, because they're so easy to clean! A quick rinse and toss them in the pan.
The leaves on the other hand, take me forever to pick out all of the grass and then wash off all of the sand. I have to really be craving spinach to go through that. Mostly I just use them for doggy stew or feed them to the birds.