CompostaBlog

Removed part of the garden fence to place coop close

Well, my middle son Ryan, his wife Amanda, and my year and a half old grandson, Aiden had a fine 4th of July today! We worked on the chicken coop. All of us together and we had a ball! Well, okay, Aiden only kept the dog occupied, but he had fun watching his dad. This has been such a fun family project.

It is going to rain tonight, so we got the left over wood we didn’t have time to use covered up. I opted to not use treated lumber for the inside of the coop since it will all be covered and closed in … the 4×4′s are treated as they will be touching the soil, but the rest is above the ground.

It sits up off the ground about 8″ and we’ll use the old lattice from the garden fence to cover up the bottom of the chicken house from the ground up to the house.

The tree view. The whole sloppy shebang!

In the back, by the raised beds (above), you can see an old tree trunk piece I rolled out there after having a tree removed that was ruined after the ‘big ice storm of ’07. (any of you in the midwet of the US will know what I mean) and it has turned into a nice sitting spot when I have company visit while I garden.

Can’t wait till our next work day. It has been making for nice family get together with my son and his family. We’re really enjoying it!

It’s a bit of a mess here, and you can see the whole run, the chicken wire doesn’t even look like it is there, but it is all around and across the top of the run. You can barely make out Red, but he’s in there. He watched us work all day long.

As you can see below, we have some trimming to do and we miss judged a few things about the electrical pole… didn’t want to be so close to that. Okay, we’re not professional carpenters and it’s ONLY a chicken house, right?

Now, we’re in and waiting for the rain.

The south view of the floor.

Okay, so last year I was begging for rain. They said Oklahoma was the driest it had been since the dust bowl. But THIS year, oh my… like they say, be careful what you wish for…

The two raised beds are entirely tooo small to grow all this ‘big stuff’ zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, all my favorite summertime munchables. I need to make some new beds for next year… (note to self)

As you know from reading about the creation of my garden the raised beds were filled completely with compost, grass clippings, shredded leaves, and a bit of horse manure from the local race track thrown in.

Well, have I learned a lesson about compost ingredients this year. Last year most everything just couldn’t take the dry summer heat, no matter how much water I lavished on it. THIS year I found what that new ‘soil’ was really made of! Entirely too much nitrogen. I have leaves on the zucchini the size of antediluvian fossil records. I’ve got zucchini the size of my coffee table and I’m NOT kidding.

If anyone doubts what good compost can do, come see my garden.