White Net Goes Up

I was thinking about transplanting my flowers yesterday, and I looked at how the beds in the moon garden are doing.

Overall, it's not been a rousing success. Or really a success at all. The bulbs I transplanted did not take (spring transplanting is not the best time). The peas I planted have been decimated by the chickens. Some plants, like peppers and tomatoes not only did not make any headway in the soil, but they alternately dried out and froze. The lettuces and onions never put down strong enough roots. The beets did nothing.

It's really been surprising how badly the growing season has been so far.

But experimenting with a range of beds, I decided I think I prefer the weed squashing method. I level the dirt, then put down a layer of cardboard, or a few layers of newspaper. Then I pile a few inches of mulch (in my case, manured hay). My mistake the first time was to plant only into the mulch, which probably left not enough soil contact, and too many air gaps. So this time I'm poking holes in my cardboard and planting into the dirt underneath, leaving little openings in the mulch.

I worked on garden beds yesterday, so I'd be ready to plant today. I didn't finish (I got tired of pushing the wheelbarrow and tossing the wet mulch), but I made good progress.

At first it was really fun to plant flowers today.

By my second or third tray, though, I looked over and saw the chicken scourge coming my way. They had hit the pea bed: another few feet and their aggressive claws and beaks would be chomping on my flower bed.

I had sort of thought the chickens would move to follow the cows, but Phil has had an unending stream of work-for-pay lately, and hasn't been able to move the chickens.

And even if the chickens move, the two puppies love to romp! While it is adorable to watch them run and tackle each other through the green manured fields, they head through the moon garden, snapping at bees, and leaping gleefully, without any regard for the tender plants they might be crushing underfoot.

And while it is hard to blame the puppies for not understanding artificial boundaries, it still discourages me so much.

The puppies have also taken to romping through my precious apple nursery bed. I haul them out, and they go back in.

Then, when they get bored with that, they turn to the garlic, and frolic among the plants.

Stately Bitsy sits in the driveway, waiting patiently for me to notice her. I bring her the recalcitrant pups, but she isn't tutoring them for me!

So Phil and I put up electric net around the moon bed. Then, when he went to get a second set of netting, I watched, dumbfounded, as the puppies pulled up one of my marking stakes in the nursery and chewed it; then cracked one of the grafts. (I later found a graft scion completely separated from the grafting wood. It was a successful one, too.) We couldn't get the netting up fast enough.

For the moment, my plants are safe.