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Today, I just want to share something with my readers. Earlier in my articles I shared a picture of a bed that I planted Sugar Snaps in. It was a new garden bed, layered with hay, mulch, chicken fertilizer, and leaves. The Sugar Snaps came up and have started producing. Here is a picture of some of my first harvest. Remember, these are garden beds that are 4x8 ft in diameter.  Anyhow, back to the beds, earlier in the posts I talked about the new beds and filling them with mulch, chicken fertile, leaves and hay. Hay was always put underneath the other layers to discourage the growth of any grass seed. I had retrieved the mulch from the piles at the chicken pen. I didn't think much about the seed flying out of the automatic feeder in the pen itself, but there you have it. Grains of Barley and Sunflowers outside the pen, these went right into the mulch and new beds via my wheelbarrow. Not one thought as to what was happening from me. As a week past I started seeing little grains of Barley popping out of the soil and a Sunflower here and there. Then it dawned on me what I had done. As for me, I am always looking for the different in everything. As I love Sunflowers, I decided to leave them so that the peas could use them as support and save me the time of staking them myself and they would add beautiful color to my garden. I pulled the Barley shoots up every day for about a week and fed them back to the chickens. That was a treat for them. The peas were growing beautifully and kind of taking over the young flowers so I gently would keep them away from the Sunflowers until they were big enough to hold the pea stalk weight. It took the Sunflowers about two weeks to really get tough and stand tall. After that, I left everything alone. I have an automatic sprinkler system that comes on in the garden, and I just watched them grow. That bed was rich in natural fertilizer so nothing else needed.  After a few weeks of growth, they all flourished together, and the Sunflowers grew tall. Remember, these were seeds from chicken feed, so I had no clue as to the kind that they would turn out to be. Let's move forward to the present day. Those plants have really grown and as I stated earlier the Sugar Snap Peas are producing, and now for the Sunflowers, they are beginning to open their blooms of beauty. Would I grow these together again? Yes, the little bit of effort I had to put forth in the beginning is so worth having the beautiful flowers and delicious peas. Is there anything that I might do differently? Yes, I would plant the peas a little thinner, and just a little further apart in rows. I'm already thinking about the next pea season, I'm going to plant a larger stalk variety of Sunflower in with the Sugar Snap Peas. I think this will take care of the vine weight problem. So, today is the Southern Dabbler's birthday, and as I walked through my garden with my cup of coffee this morning, I got a Big Ol' wink from one of the beauties, as if to say, thank you and happy trip around the sun. 
1 Comment
Saleigh
11/8/2023 10:28:34 am
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Welcome to My Garden Some people may wonder why it is called a Secret Garden. My home is in the middle of eighty acres, and the house is shaped like a capital H with the front legs half cut off. The back side consist of patios, decks, and a pool area that are basically hidden from site. This makes the patio garden very secluded. I decided to fill the swimming pool in and expand the little garden patio to the enclosed area that was the pool. This gave the garden a pretty fenced in area. The picket fence would also protect my vegetable garden from those four-legged friends that enjoy coming to visit. The garden is filled with all varieties of flowers and vegetables. It has a few palms, because of my love for the ocean, and they remind me of that little breath of fresh air when I can't be there too. I guess you could say, I am blessed to be able to have the best of both worlds, country living and Gulf air.
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