Palace maintenance

Poultry Palace is too wet. Not too wet to provide us with 13 eggs in the first week of production, but too wet for the general good health of the chooks as they are not at this stage allowed out to free range.

So today I started to cover the walls of Poultry Palace with plastic. I used some from my last mini-tunnel house experiment and hoped for better success with this project. I bought some tent pegs to secure the chook run to the ground so the whole plasticked-in palace does not become a sail and relocate to the neighbour's place. I went down to the garden nursery and bought more plastic and took the opportunity to buy some bright lights silverbeet seedlings and more potting mix.

I need to take photos and upload and download them. Or is it the other way around?

I spent some time on the small slightly raised garden bed I've made on one of the higher spots in the lawn. I lifted the logs and fed all the flatworms and slugs to the chooks and clipped the grass around the logs. I planted the silverbeet seedlings using lots of potting mix around each one. The bed is otherwise layered with pine needles, a bit of sand, chicken manure/sawdust, wood ash and pea straw. As is so often the case for me, I have heaps of tiny seedling plants which have just germinated recently and no larger plants. Enter the garden shop. Buying their seedlings has to be better than buying cut greens in the supermarket. I cannot bring myself to pay good money (indeed large sums of money) for heavily sprayed, not particularly fresh or nutrient dense, cut and plasti-wrapped spinach or silverbeet when I can grow it myself any time of year.

Yesterday I weeded out the front where I made a bed for pumpkins last Autumn. I pulled lots of onion weed out - that is the only plant which made it through the heavy horse manure and pea straw mulch I made back in March. I didn't need to dig it out - in this wet soil I could pull almost all of it out barehanded without breaking the plant and leaving the roots. I know onion weed is edible but I've done a few experiments with eating it and we really do have so much more onion weed than I can imagine wanting to eat. The horse manure has turned into lovely soil and I'm hopeful of a good pumpkin crop this summer. The pumpkin seeds haven't yet germinated at the tool shed window but there is still plenty of time.

I have two irises in bloom now - both yellow which is perfect given they are in the garden which I have long term plans for turning into a predominantly yellow garden. I have quite a few freesias out and many are flopping across the garden or adjacent path. But where I have some freesias growing up through the roses, the rose bush is holding them in place and they look lovely, white blooms poking through fresh glossy green new rose leaf growth. So I need to find some good companion plants for the freesias next year so they don't flop everywhere.