Garden Mid-Season Update

We are right in the middle of our growing season, so this is a good time to look at how things are growing. Often, this time of year, we are so busy picking tomatoes and figuring out new ways to use zucchini that we don't get a chance to take any pictures of the garden.  I had to force myself to get the camera outside this morning.

Above, you see one sad rosemary plant (I don't hold much hope for the winter for this guy), some fantastic sage on the ground and a fragrant pineapple sage in the center.  I do love sage.

Below is another shot of the same herb garden, in which you can see some fennel, chocolate mint, and peeks of very crowded oregano.  I transplanted some oregano to another herb garden in the spring because the oregano is clearly losing this fight.(see their spring pics)

The cone flowers (echinacea) are at the end of their glory; the bees and butterflies have stopped visiting them and have moved on to the mint and Russian sage.  We will leave these as a winter treat for the birds.

Below is the Italian garden.  The tomatoes, basil, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, and flowers are all doing well. I've mulched over the new asparagus planted this spring just outside the fencing.

It is getting difficult to walk in the squash garden, below.  My new butterfly weed just outside the door has finally stopped being food for the wildlife, so I removed the cage my sons made for it.  The purple cabbage is grown mostly for the chickens, which means I don't need to worry about any bugs eating it (extra treats for the chickens).

I do love little pathways...

This one leads to the newly weeded and mulched strawberry patch.

The cucumber plants are doing really well.  I'm hoping to try making pickles this summer.

Searching for the cucumbers is fun.  Equally fun is the search for pumpkins in the mass of vines below.  If you look carefully, you'll see a large green one hiding in the leaves.  We've gotten zucchini, spaghetti squash, patty pans, and pumpkins so far this year.

Not everything is going as planned in our garden.  The blackberries are looking less-than-lovely this year.  I'm thinking that the chickens might be getting more berries than normal.

The struggle to grow pole beans AND limit the Mexican bean beetle population by planting in the chicken coop is a work-in-progress.  The first problem we found is that the chickens kept getting into the bean area of the coop, trapped in there with nothing to do except eat bean plants. I limited the area by just fencing two of the best plants.  The second problem is that the chickens don't seem interested in eating the bean beetles! Figures.

We never realized how the wind patterns around our property would affect what we grow, but now that we've got six fruit trees on the top of our hill, we realize that there is somewhat of a wind tunnel going through there.  We've staked one of the peach trees to help keep it upright during the gusts.

The blueberries in the above picture are finished for the season, so they've been weeded and mulched.  At this point in the year, we are turning our attention to harvesting vegetables, bracing ourselves for the big apple harvest in September.

Chickens as Gardeners

Besides laying beautiful eggs each day for us, our chickens are fantastic gardeners.  They till one garden plot each season for us (they follow the squash garden and the Italian garden follows them), turning the soil, eating all the weeds and spent plants, and removing bugs who have overwintered in the soil.  This year, they've also agreed to monitor the pole beans for us.

Pole beans are a favorite here.  They are easy to grow, give a large yield without too much effort, and the kids enjoy the growing plants and the finished product.  We were surprised last year to find, for the first time, Mexican bean beetles on our plants.  What look like yellowy-orange lady bugs eat the leaves of the pole bean plant, thus depriving the plant of photosynthesis.  We still got beans, but much less than normal, and the plants looked really ugly with their decimated leaves.

So, what's a gardener to do?

 That's right:  bring in the chickens!

Rather than rotating the pole bean crop to a new garden with the squash and cabbage, we planted them in the same spot as last year.  Normally, that would be an invitation to the overwintered bugs for a repeat performance, but this year, the chickens are in that garden.  I installed rabbit fencing along one wall of their yard, with bamboo stakes for support (and for the pole beans to climb).  The pole beans are planted in between the rabbit fencing and the fenced wall of the yard.  So far, the chickens have not dug under the fencing. I'm *hoping* that by the time they undermine the rabbit fencing, the pole beans will be well-established.  Once the plants are tall enough, the chickens will do little damage to them.

As the plants grow, any Mexican bean beetles that emerge will become chicken food (if they cooperate with my grand scheme).  Any that appear on the leaves can be easily knocked off for the chickens...integrated pest management and organic gardening.  It will be a win/win...if it works.

*UPDATE*6/5/11
This morning I found Indigo trapped in the pole bean part of the chicken yard.  We were not in the garden at all yesterday, so we didn't notice her in there.  She seemingly dug her way under the rabbit fencing and must have spent the night in there.  Needless to say, the pole beans are all broken and/or eaten.  I planted some more today.