Chicken fence! and vegetable garden

This weekend we built a fence around the raised vegetable planting beds to keep the chickens out.

You may remember that initially we got the chickens to kill grasshoppers and other garden pests.  They did a wonderful job of this - but eventually they figured out that they could eat the vegetables themselves.  Last winter they devoured all of my lettuce in one afternoon.

So Dev and I built a chicken-proof fence around the vegetables: the CEZ (Chicken Exclusion Zone).  To be fair, Dev did all of the building, but I designed the fence and also dug the 24-inch-deep post holes, which was no easy task.

With the fence up, I rushed to fill the beds with new vegetables (after first refreshing the soil with manure, compost, and fertilizer).  Since we're getting a late start this year, I grew some plants from seedlings and others from seeds I'd already ordered.

My garden notebook, where I take notes with a level of detail too excruciating even for this blog

This summer we have:

Tomatoes (Better Boy, Early Girl, Beefmaster, Celebrity, Roma, Cherry, Sungold, and Kellogg's Breakfast)
Carrots (Imperator and Nantes)
Beans (Beurre de Rocquencourt and Missouri Wonder)
Beets (Bull's Blood)
Zucchini (Golden, Black Beauty)
Crookneck squash
Butternut squash
Pumpkins (Connecticut Field and Jack of All Trades)
Bell Peppers
Shishito Peppers
Eggplant (Black Beauty, Ping Tung, and Japanese Long)

Crookneck squash

 

Hopefully I can make up for the late start and get some good produce this summer. I admit, my heart is set on finally growing pumpkins this year (this will be my third try).

Bonus picture of my herbs on the front porch - I love that rosemary tree: