Encouraging diversity in the lawn promotes many bees, and often when mowing I have left patches of clover. Bees have been declining and anything we can do to encourage them to survive helps them, and us!
There IS residual effects of Roundup, from the glyphosate: Glyphosate ends up in the...
Yes, the flowers except the roses are all planted from seed. The seed companies I buy the majority of seeds from are Johnny's Selected Seeds and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, because they give adequate information, such as days to maturity, perennial, annual, long day vs. short day, etc...
Here are some pics:
Calendula
Irish Poet
Bells of Ireland. I love the scent!
Gomphrena. I had to plant this bed twice. My geese were pulling the newly planted starts and putting them in the pond.
Benary's Giant Zinnia
Powder Puff Cosmos
Mixed Zinnias
New rose 'St. John'...
Has anyone ever seen a flower grow like this? It's a Calendula. After the main bloom died 'tentacles' grew from the main flower head and bloomed, as you can see. It's like a Medusa flower.
Some flower seeds are already started. Starting onion, herb, and more flower seeds soon. Lettuce seeds around February. Tomato and pepper seeds I start around mid to late March.
This is just a portion of their area. There's 14 hens and pullets, one rooster, 12 muscovies, and two geese. They share around one acre fenced, and as you can see plenty of room with greens.
I don't know why the chickens have to go where they get into trouble, such as in the garage on a nice...
They do have a very large foraging area, of varied landscaping, probably an acre for this group. For some reason they just want to go where they're not supposed to sometimes, and as any chicken owner knows how much damage can be done by those little tillers in a short amount of time.
Yes, there is some warming from the lake, as well as lake effect snow. Also, our property is just uphill from an expansive marsh and creek, which is part of our property, that also warms the air.
The entire surrounding region has been mild though.
With this group of birds the fence has to be 7 foot high. There's enough fenced in around here, that I've been removing individual fences around bushes and putting large heavy logs around them, because they started jumping the fences around the individual bushes. It looks better with the logs...
Husband tilled most of the flower garden area. Digging areas where the tiller can't reach. The chickens have a job for now of keeping it loose and from anything growing.
I have to figure out how to keep them out of it though when everything is being planted.
I put a packet of comfrey in the refrigerator to stratify over over two years ago. For the reasons of conflicting information is why I haven't planted them. There is one type from seeds and one from root cuttings, and I believe one of the two types can become invasive.
I have a bottle of a...