My garden 😞

[Sheepshape]

Absolutely gorgeous!! All we see is mud and a dusting of snow...

I hope things improve for you soon. We had a sea of mud up until a month ago....now it is way too dry and the grass has stopped growing. Our climate is altering fast.....it's difficult to deal with.

A bit more in context with the prior posts....I'm a feeder.....little and often from me. I say it discourages rats, but the truth is that I love to keep checking on my critters and having them VERY tame.

 

[Xerocles]

I feel like I'm moving on slo-mo on my garden. Plant one thing, and wait a few days to see if it survives.Then on to the next. That's OK. Learning valuable lesions for next year. Harvest or no harvest, I will have figured out some things that work, and some that don't.
The remaining 4 ducks seem to be doing fine. But they're ugly. First feathers coming in. They're fawn and white. Right now they just look dirty.
Speaking of needing a bath....how do I get the ducks to swim? Silly question? Maybe not. When they were only a couple weeks old, I put them in MY bathtub...and they had a ball. About 4 times. Torpedoing and everything. Now, in the tub that I went to considerable trouble to install for them, nada. For a week in a row, I made a trail of food up the ramp to the edge of the tub. Ate the food and walked back down. I physically caught them (inside their house....can't get within 5 feet of them otherwise) and gently placed them, some on the "inside" ramp and some actually in the water. Universally acted like they had just landed in Hades and scrambled madly until they escaped (over the sides with a drop to the ground....NOT on my well prepared ramps.
At least after completely devouring my sugar snap peas, they haven't even seemed to nibble at the tomatoes, peppers, leaf lettuce, or cucumbers.
In spite of being ugly, anti-social, pea eaters, at least one of them (I can't tell them apart) has developed an endearing and comical habit. First, you gotta know runner ducks to appreciate this, with their upright posture. One lowers it's breast down to within an inch of the ground, neck outstretched as far as possible, opens it's beak, and runs at top speed (presumably after bugs) about the garden. If nothing else, they've given me a laugh.

 

[Baymule]

Runner ducks are bowling pins on stumpy legs. Yes, they will make you laugh. They will also lay you some delicious big eggs. The benefits of country living! I’m glad that you are enjoying yourself.

 

[Beekissed]

I've seen other people arrange elevated swimming places for their ducks but I never could get my younger ducks to use them. Later on, as adults, they will fly up into watering pans and heated buckets I have elevated purposefully out of their reach, there to take a swim.

As with most animals, they will do the direct opposite of what you want most of the time.....give them time and make it pretty clear you don't want them in that bathtub and they will be using it on a regular basis.

 

[Baymule]

I had a bathtub next to the deck for mine. They would telescope up, peer over the edge, looking at the water, telescope down and chatter excitedly. It took them a few weeks to figure out that they could get on the deck and jump in the tub.

 

[thistlebloom]

I think if you set an example for them they would learn faster.
Get in there and sing and splash and they won't be able to resist joining you.

 

[Beekissed]

I think if you set an example for them they would learn faster.
Get in there and sing and splash and they won't be able to resist joining you.

We laugh about that....but it's true. Whenever I want to assure the ducks I've refilled their movable swimming hole, they don't seem to want to try it until I put my hand in it and splash around in the water. Ducks like routine, so when I move stuff on them, they are wary of it until I show them it's the same water, in the same receptacle, it's just 4 ft away from where it was last.

If I don't do the splash, they will avoid it all day long and sometimes won't use it at all, but will then go up and fly up into the dog's watering pan to swim there instead. This is a watering pan that is shallow and sitting up on two stacked tires. Their portable watering place is a stainless steel sink with a step up to it, so it's not about which is easier, but about what stayed in the same place and didn't scare them.

Ducks.....gotta love 'em. My two hens are sitting on nests right now and it seems they've been sitting forever, but at least they chose a safe place to sit(in the coop) and tucked away in a corner. I love that.

 

[Xerocles]

I think if you set an example for them they would learn faster.
Get in there and sing and splash and they won't be able to resist joining you.

Darn! I should have gotten this advice on Saturday. Since that was international naked gardening day, it would have been the perfect day to try it out. And besides....1st Saturday of the month....that's my day for a bath anyhow.

 

[thistlebloom]

I didn't say you should do it nekkid. The idea is not to frighten them.

 

[B&B Happy goats]