Winter Veges

Over Spring and Summer our vege garden was a waste of time this year.  It seems we can't keep the chooks contained and so everything I planted was eaten down and then dug up as they scratched the soil over.

Added to the drought and the well where our irrigation comes from running dry, veges were a write off.  Well, except for potatoes, we did okay out of spuds.  I grew them in tyres filled with chicken poo and pig poo.  I'd definitely recommend growing them in tyres to anyone.

Since we couldn't seem to keep the chooks in where they were supposed to be, we thought we should try keeping them out of where they shouldn't be.

In desperation, I found some bird netting that we'd had lying around the place and rounded up Hubby to help me put it up around one vege patch.  The bird netting  was the type used in vineyards and given the bits of vineyard paraphernalia we find around here, I'm only surprised that there was one piece of about 10m long.

First patch of vege garden

We planted out some more seedlings of winter veges - broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts and waited with trepidation to see if the chooks would beat this too.

They didn't and the veges are growing well.  So Hubby went looking on Trade Me for more bird netting.  He found a vineyard selling it's old netting 75m for $20.  The auction stated that it had some rather large holes in it, but as we didn't have a large garden to go around, holes were minor and could be fixed or patched as needed.

When he went to pick it up, the guy couldn't find a 75m roll and didn't have a lot of time to spare so he gave him a 150m roll for that $20.

We've now netted the next patch of vege garden - this one was bigger and didn't have any walls or trellis to fix it to on any sides like the first one, so we put up vertical posts in the corners and strung some plastic cord (another thing we seem to have bags full of that was left behind) and curtain hooks hold the netting up to the cord nicely.

Second patch with added posts etc

Curtain hooks holding up the netting

Curtain hooks also work to close up holes.

This patch has now got broccoli, cauliflower, celery and spring onions growing and room for more.  I've had to explain to Hubby that we don't want to start too much all at once and successive plantings are better, even with winter veges.

Let's hope this all works now and we can get some veges of our own!