Ohiofarmgirl's Adventures in The Good Land is largely a fish out of water tale about how I eventually found my footing on a small farm in an Amish town. We are a mostly organic, somewhat self sufficient, sustainable farm in Ohio. There's action and adventure and I'll always tell you the truth about farming.


Thursday, April 30, 2015

Goose Salad

Yesterday I went out to plant my tray of perfectly sprouted, ready for action lettuce. I've been dying for real salad and my victory was close... But instead of finding my tray of sprouts, I found this....

Destroyed. Gone.

I looked around for the perpetrators. I found them.

Guilty.

Dang. Nothing is more disheartening then having your gardening efforts thwarted by badly behaved poultry. Nothing. 

So what do you do when you have a barnyard full of flying monkeys who live only to destroy everything you put your hand to?  As always... the best you can.

Hoops with netting are protecting the broccoli and bok choi.

Sure you can fence poultry out of your garden but they will always find their way in... so while fencing is your first step it is not your last. I've had terrific success using hoops. Cutting up fencing might make you grind your teeth but it's better than finding all your seedlings scattered. Using hoops also keeps the dogs from trampling everything.

If you really want to do it up right then add netting. It might seem like a high cost way to grow vegetables but you can reuse these materials over and over. Plus you can use hoops and plastic or row covers to extend your gardening season.

I find that somewhat low hoops are best - that way the chickens can't easily get under the hoops and scratch around. For two or three row plantings I cut the fence so there are 5 full holes in the fence piece.... and cut each end piece in the center of the hole.  This way there are pointy end pieces that I can push into the ground to hold them in place.

As for what happened to my my lettuce..... instead of putting the tray up on the table I put it on a low bench. And then walked away. That was my error. I need to put all of my seedlings at least hip high to discourage them from becoming goose salad.

What happened to the geese? Nothing. I glared at them.

I'm going to see if I can plant the shattered remains of the seedlings - they might grow yet. But if the geese keep it up my first salad my indeed be goose salad... if you know what I mean.

Happy Thursday everyone! Did your goose get your salad?


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not geese but blue jays pulled up all my little onion starts. Pulled them, bit in half and threw them aside. I guess they didn't like the taste.

IanH said...

Perhaps a stay in The Freezer Hilton is in order. :-}

Erin said...

I just finished putting some hoops over my new bean seedlings in the garden, hoping to get them past the "sprout snatching stage"!

Diana said...

What a great idea. I've been fretting about what to do about the ducks I'm going to have in there in a month or so... bird netting over black pvc arches, or what? This system seems more flexible.

Ohiofarmgirl said...

Yep, Anon, i swear the jays watch me plant beans just so they can yank them up. ugh!

Ian... you have no idea how close a call that was...

Hi Erin! GREAT to see you here :-) and great work with the hoops.

Diana - you can get arches like that - but we had fence so that's what I used. Mother of invention and all.... Would love to see what you come up with. :-)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...