The 3K garden in Buffalo

This spring I helped my sister in Buffalo NY start her garden at her new home.  She's not as urban as I am and has more than my 1.09 acres, though we followed an urban garden concept for her garden same as I did with mine.  Goes to show it will work for everyone, no matter now much space you have or don't have.

My sister's name is Kathy, her daughter's name is Kristina and her granddaughter's name is Kira so of course the name 3K Garden seam obvious.  Here are some picture the 3K garden so you can see how easy it is to create a workable garden.  From start to finish this was a weekend project. I did have several family members helping so I don't want anyone to think I did it all myself.

Being a fan of Mel Bartholomew and his Square Foot Gardening books I use many of his concepts for my own garden as well as for my sister's.  Building raised beds and planting by the square foot is definitely the way to go.  Now if I'm talking about rows in my garden it's rows of garden boxes not rows of plants.

Start with a design.  Graph paper works great for this, though we changed the design as we went along.    Since we did the square foot concept each square on the graph paper equaled one foot.  Only needed a ruler so my lines were straight.

 

The K box was the most complex. Fortunately I had access to family with carpentry skills.  Lots of sawing (thanks Mike), some deck screws (again thanks Mike), a lot of mulch and a variation of Mel Bartholomew's soil mixture we were ready to plant (thanks Everyone).

 

A couple of month's later the plants were off and running and my sister and her family got to start reaping the benefits.  If only she can keep her granddaughter from picking and eating the vegetables before she can get them into the house and on the dinner table.

Chicken is my favorite food.... I'm not the only one who loves it.

This spring has been a battle of me against nature.  I'm not talking snow and cold weather, hurricanes or even rain storms.  I'm talking about all the hungry eyes you see looking back at you in the night.  Much of my blog is about my efforts raising chickens, mostly for eggs but also some for meat.  I love both eggs and chicken meat, so do my neighbors, family members and coworkers.  Though lately I don't have many eggs to share.

I've taken great precautions to guard my flock from roaming dogs which have been a problem in the past.  Last summer I woke up to find 40 dead chickens scattered all across my 1.09 acres.  The obvious work a group of dogs which I'm sure (but can't prove) live in my neighborhood.  Lots of fencing and dollars later, I thought my problems were over.  They seemed to be, at least from roaming dogs.

A couple of months ago I noticed a dead chicken, definitely eaten by something.  Dogs usually just kill them.  So I'm guessing a hawk or fox had gotten one that didn't get put up at night.  Some of my girls decided they liked the trees better than the coop at night. 

Over the next several weeks I kept loosing hens.  Either finding them dead and half eaten or simply missing.  I locked up those I could get out of the trees and set traps only to have the bait taken and the trap not sprung.

Eventually with the help of a neighbor I setup a couple of trail cams and was able to record and trap not only an opossum but a raccoon as well. 

Not sure which of these were bypassing my safeguards or maybe they were working together who knows.  Many times the activity in my yard reminds me of old cartoons.  But now the trapped chicken killers live somewhere else and the remaining girls are doing well and only have one left that prefers the trees at night.

It's a constant battle and something every chicken owner will have to deal with at some point.

Be nice to the trash collectors, you never know when you will have a bag of dead chickens for them to take away.