Chicken pals and endless weeding

"You left your hand coverings on the ground. I don't like them."

Meet Jemima, the mud-diggin' chicken. ;)

This isn't her official name, only my name for her, as I'm fairly sure she isn't named. Nearly every time I've been out at the allotment recently, she's joined me to help 'dig'.

The routine is, I arrive with my car and collect my tools from the shed adjoining the chicken coop. The cockerels kick up a fuss at the sight of me, to which the entire flock joins in, squawking. I head off to start digging. As they calm down, Jemima sneaks away and quietly appears beside me often making me jump.

The rule is, its my job to turn over a patch of earth, then its her turn to dive in, pecking away the worms and other undesirables. Teamwork. Not so fun for the worms, but I'm sure there will be plenty survivors from her massacre.

She has only eaten one worm from my hand so far, so quite a ways to train her before we're best buddies. In the past I've had chickens so tame they'd hop on my lap and fall asleep. Thats the goal.

However, I'm quite worried that she'll never get used to my voice. Every time so far that I've been out to the allotment so far, I've been listening to an audio book read by Ian McKellen. She knows his voice! Whenever I talk to her, she gets startled and looks at me funny.

To her, I'm a magical digging machine that unearths bugs with the voice of Ian McKellen. There could be worse things than being a Gandalf, the Worm Wizard to a chicken, I suppose.

"No worms?! Work faster human!"

Having a dirt bath with one of the jealous cockerels trying to take her back to the coop

The compost pile is growing. I'm not sure how many barrowloads of weeds are still left in the field, but would easily be upwards of 20.

The worst offenders are chickweed, deaf nettles and creeping buttercup. Creeping buttercup is by far the worst thing to deal with. Their roots hold onto the earth so fiercely. Other weeds taking hold include a few rogue dockens, daisies and thistles. No nettles yet, thankfully. 

Deaf Nettles by the millions

Chickweed

A few weeks ago I went on a mission to acquire some old carpet to lay as a temporary weed killer. Anything to help reduce the workload of the whole area will help.

The plot as a whole is still a long ways from being finished, but its getting there. I'll keep chipping away at it.

Weeding the allotment

After my second day volunteering at Turriefield I made it my mission over the weekend to clear as much as I could.

I visited the allotment several times to weed it before but then I'd mostly been pulling things up by hand. The plot's weeds had a growth spurt after some rain. Deaf nettles, and creeping buttercup infest it.

After 5 hours or so I cleared this patch. It didn't look too bad.

But in the larger context its like a spit in the ocean. 

After a second session things were looking better. But there is still so much to do.

Its my goal to try and get at least HALF of the ground cleared before winter really sets in. Its a slow process though. By far the worst culprit is creeping buttercup.



At the moment this is my most hated weed. Each plant put down an deep tap root. Then it shoots off runners like a strawberry. Each plant can have up to 10 runners or so. Every runner roots and creates a new plant, that creates more runners. Of course if you leave a single root in the ground, it will create a new plant.
Its a nightmare to dig it all up.