This morning was spent building new beds. The main worm farm had 80% of its mass wheeled up hill in the wheel barrow to the new long bed down the side of the block. This bed had been prepared by
- Laying plastic over it for the last 6 or so months to solarize and weaken the cooch grass.
- Letting the chickens and tractor away with all their chickeny scratch and scootness. Helps reduce the weeds a bit more again, loosens and aerates the soil. This is when the chickens dust bathe, which I'd never even heard of before seeing the chickens do it. It is a funny sight.
- Layer cardboard and old newspapers
- Spread around some horse poo
- Cover with about a centimetre or two of worm compost. Full of worms and should have their spring population explosion in the new bed. Worm mulch is heavy.
- Cover with mulch.
- Politely let the chickens know they cannot eat all the worms out of this nice new bed.
3 comments:
How do you let chickens know *anything* politely? *lol*
I bet your chickens will do anything to get the worms!
sounds like a heap of work! excellent :)
Mostly it was fairly easy work that could be done in small bits over time. Other than wheeling the worm mulch up the hill, that bit was hard. Part of why I want to make this the main worm farm for the future as its on the same level as the main garden bed.
I wish I had more compost as I'd like to make a much larger area of new beds.
I told the chickens to leave the worms alone by standing between them and the worms. They looked at me and said 'bok?' and moved forward to the bed. I stepped into their way. They said 'bok? burr. bok.' and went back to their far more urgent work around the maple and driveway edging. Then luckily they decided it was too windy and ran down to their coop.
In general the chickens have a mobile wire mesh tractor they stay in during the day and if they free range they have supervision so hopefully will be able to keep the worms safe.
Post a Comment