Pollinator Gardens--A Guest Post by Debbie Burns

Dear friends,

Today I have another guest blog post article by my dear friend, Debbie Burns.  Debbie lives in north Texas on her Beulah Land farm, with her husband John.  She shared a bit about her chickens with us last week in an article titled Let the Chickens do the Digging.

Here, she talks a bit about her Pollinator Gardens and shares a few more photos with us.  It's important these days to plant things to support our native pollinators.  So many of them are destroyed by agricultural chemicals, damaging weather, etc.

Hope you are inspired to plant a few plants in your garden that attract pollinators!

Pollinator Gardens

by Debbie Burns

When we decided to convert to Wild Life Conservation for our land Ag Exemption we had no idea how much it would impact our lives.  One of our goals was to create Pollinator Gardens to feed and nourish all kind of pollinators, not just butterflies or hummingbirds.

Since there is no water source in our pastures we wanted to test the Pollinator Garden idea in our yard, convenient to the water spigot with easy access for maintenance. We designed one in the front, the South Pollinator Garden, and one on the side, the West Pollinator Garden. Again, these were test gardens so we decided to not spend a lot in set up. We had some old landscape timbers – yes, I know they’re not food safe by any means, but they were already here and paid for – to edge the gardens and hold down landscape fabric or cardboard.

The West Pollinator Garden

 We used the cardboard to mulch around the plants, on wet ground, then added pine bark mulch on top to make it look better. Surrounding the garden area I have a width of landscape fabric with stepping stones to hold it down. This was to prevent the yard Bermuda from taking over the garden area. So far that has worked well.  I still need to put pine bark mulch on top of the landscape fabric but that has fallen to the bottom of the budget list. Since this is the first year for the plants I’ve had to water them regularly. I’m hoping that won’t be needed next year as their root system grows.

The West Pollinator Garden showing walkway around the perimeter

I purchased the plants for the South Pollinator Garden – butterfly bush (which was the only one that died), yarrow, esperenza, orange lantana, tansy, white salvia, Purple Homestead verbena, lemon verbena, achillea Pink and two stevia herb plants. Even thought these plants are labeled for full sun, they haven’t done as well as the same plants in the West garden that gets partial shade.

A friend invited me over to dig from her native plant collection. On her recommendation I purchased the Native Texas Plants book, which is fantastic. Most of her plants went into the West Pollinator Garden – daylily, lantana, salvia, sensitivity plant. I also purchased German chamomile and blue salvia that is outdoing itself in there.

I transplanted zinnias I  seeded inside, but the self-seeded zinnia from last year out-did all the other plants in attracting the hummingbirds and butterflies to the West Garden. The hummingbirds flit from the flowers to the feeder hanging close-by on the clothes pole.

South Pollinator Garden

So how did these two simple gardens change our lives?  It’s amazing how much time we spend watching the birds and butterflies zoom in and out around the gardens---especially the West garden with those bright red zinnias. At one time we counted eight hummingbirds buzzing around and we’ve seen swarms of butterflies hovering over the flowers. Wasps and mud daubers come to dig in the mud to build their nests.

The South Pollinator Garden has a shallow dish to supply water for the pollinators also.

South Pollinator Garden

As we’ve sat at the kitchen table, looking out on the West Pollinator Garden, we’ve seen so many different colors of hummingbirds, butterflies and dragonflies. We’ve also seen blue birds, cardinals, swallows and many other birds come up to our yard that have not been there in prior years. We didn’t realize the Pollinator Gardens would draw up so many different types of birds.

Swing beside the West Pollinator Garden

 We’ve found we’re enjoying our yard so much more than in past years, spending time on the porch swing beside the West Garden or walking out tending the plants in both gardens. I guess the Pollinator Gardens have drawn us up to them as well!

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Let the Chickens do the Digging!

Today I have a guest blogger, Debbie Burns.  Debbie is a good friend of mine from way back, although we’ve never met in person (yet). Debbie gardens and homesteads up in north Texas with her husband John, and has an extraordinary wealth of knowledge about farm animals and plants.  She’s also a quilter, and recently gifted me with a wonderful house warming gift that I wrote about on my Two Sisters 1930 Cottage blog.

 Please come back again next week as I publish another article from Debbie on Pollinator Gardens.  

Debbie Burns teaches local school children about herbs

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Let the Chickens do the Digging!

by Debbie Burns

Beulah Land Homestead

I’ll show my age if I ask if anyone remembers the old Yellow Pages advertising quip --- “Let your fingers do the walking.”  OK, maybe not, but I remember it and I think of it as I look out at our chickens doing the digging for our new garden beds. 

Chickens in their chicken tractor do the digging for you! BEFORE

In Gene Logsdon’s book, Homestead Livestock, he states, “Don’t do work nature will do for you.” We took his advice to heart and built our chicken tractors (movable pens that allow chickens to safely free range) to fit the garden space we have along the fence in our yard.

We’re building this garden in stages so one area was planted for the spring/summer garden.  We prepared it last year. The chickens are currently digging up a new area for us that will follow along the fence line, but will lead to a larger square area for a conventional garden site.

The fence garden will grow veggies but will also have flowers and herbs inter-planted. I refer to this as landscape gardening since it’s in our yard instead of a specific, out-of-sight garden area. I found that I can’t ignore the yard garden as easily as I can an out-of-sight garden. Hence, this garden actually gets weeded.

We can place the chicken tractor pieces over garden areas that are through producing. The chickens compost the spent plants and fertilize the soil for the next plantings. It’s a win-win situation; chickens love the green plants and we love the work they do for us!

The chicken tractor garden area, AFTER

 Normally, we only use the chicken tractors for raising meat chickens in the fall but this year we had some ‘free’ roosters sent as extras when we ordered our turkeys. We figure we’ll grow them out, let them work the garden area and then we’ll put them in the freezer as fryers. That’s a win-win-win situation, well, at least for us!

The laying hens are in a secure coop and chicken run. They do our composting work for us in that run where we throw all the goats’ dirty bedding. They turn that bedding over and over each day, digging for the worms and bugs that love the old hay.

Debbie's husband, John, tending to the meat chicken coop

In less than 3 months we have fantastic compost that can be used on the gardens. So much easier than turning compost by hand and the chickens enjoy their job with the wormy benefits.

You may not remember the “Let your fingers do the walking” slogan, but I encourage you to incorporate Gene’s quote, “Don’t do work that nature will do for you” in your garden plans. Even if you don’t have or want chickens, there’s always something you can use to help ease your garden work. Just think outside of the box.

Copyright 2012 by Debbie Burns, Beulah Land Homestead

Debbie's husband, John, with baby goats

 

Debbie's Bio:

“I'm a wife who married her high school sweetheart 39 years ago, also a substitute teacher, homesteader, quilter, gardener, and goat-herder who loves God and the country. I always wanted to grow up to be a writer but just never got around to writing that great American novel so instead I blog and bore people with lengthy emails. Feel free to visit our website/blogs at:

Beulah Land Website

Beulah Land Blog

Debbie's Quilt Blog