Look at that gorgeous basil! It smells amazing too. More about that later.
We’ve been racking our brains to come up with a good solution for keeping the chickens out of our raised beds since last year. That’s when we covered them with netting that got caught in the lawn mower and tangled into a frustrating mess every time I uncovered the beds to maintain the contents or harvest the fruits (or veggies) of our labor.
Our chickens love doing this in the raised beds on warm spring days...
Which is all good and fine as long as there isn’t anything planted in their midst. But we just can’t have them scratching and destroying the newly planted starts and seeds.
So here’s what we came up with...
We built six of these wire cages in about three hours yesterday. All you need is a roll of wire fencing, a good wire cutting tool and some pliers to create these. Today my hands are covered with cuts and feeling a bit numb, but I think these are going to do the trick, at least for getting several veggies started, like lettuce, carrots, potatoes, radishes, cilantro. I don't mind sharing with the girls, but when they dig up seeds and starts... grrrrr.
If you live anywhere near a Trader Joe’s, you must get there right away and pick up some of these basil plants. They’re only $2.99 and each pot contains 6 (six) plants! And these are not small, immature plants... they’re already a foot high!
Thank you to my friend Theresa for letting me know about this great deal.
Happy spring!