Do you know how to grow weed? I don’t mean the type you smoke (which I understand involves bright lights and a criminal record) I mean normal weeds—the stuff that freely sprouts in your flower beds. I am finding it surprisingly difficult to grow.

The problem is the goose I hatched (nattily named ‘Goose’). Goose eats grass and dandelions and other green weeds, and every day I let Goose out of the cage to wander around the garden, eating. But Goose is still too young to be allowed out alone, plus even when fully-grown the fox might kill him (might be a her) at night. Therefore, a certain amount of cage-time is necessary. But the cage is the one where I raised the ducklings, and ducklings turn everything into soup within minutes, so anything growing in there was quickly ‘drowned and mixed.’ The cage is devoid of green stuff. No weeds in sight.

Goose lives with chick, and chickens are also fairly destructive to plants because they love to dig up the roots hunting for insects. (I have some sad petunias that I replant every evening, when the chickens are away for the night. They have been dug up 5 times now.) Even though I have planted grass seed, I doubt if it will last more than a day.

Therefore, planning for when I am away for whole days, and unable to let Goose onto the lawn, I had the brilliant idea of having seed trays, full of grass, that I could lift into the cage for lunch. If I am away for a while, someone else can give Goose a daily helping of greens in a pot. I duly filled lots of seed trays and pots, sowed grass seed and a few bits of corn from their feed, and watered them lovingly.

Day 1. The chickens dug them up. I replanted them, and covered them in sacking, planning to remove it when the grass has grown.

Day 2. The cats (or gardener) removed the sacking, and the chickens dug them up again. I carried them down to the cold frame, and lifted them onto the shelves. They were heavy, so Husband helped with the high shelves.

Day 3. (A week later) lots of green was sprouting, but it was dry and we have a hosepipe ban. I asked Husband to lift down the trays so I could water them, and then replace them afterwards. There was a delay between the watering and Husband remembering to move them—the chickens found them, and emptied the whole lot all over the lawn. I said some bad words. Scraped everything back into the seed trays, and husband lifted them onto the shelves. No sign of anything growing now.

Day 4. (A few days later) Husband was feeling guilty, so kindly went to Homebase and bought some rolls of turf for me to cut and plant in the seed trays. I unrolled the turf, but only the edges were green, the rest looked rotten. Husband suggested it might turn green if left in the sunshine, so unrolled all the turf and laid it in a sunny spot.

Day 5. (A few days later.) After watering the turf for a few days, it still looked very rotten apart from the edges. When I checked beneath it, the grass on the lawn below had now died—I was now considerably worse off than before we started. Husband arranged for a refund from Homebase, I went back to trying to grow grass from seed.

And so it continues. Almost every day, any grass I manage to grow is either found by the chickens or destroyed by the cats. I have become obsessed—whenever I see grass going to seed in the fields, or dandelion clocks, I snaffle them back to the house and add them to my seed trays. Dandelions ( a Goose favourite) are particularly difficult—even when I dig up a small one from the garden, taking care to get the whole root, and plant it instantly in a pot of soil with plenty of water—it is always shrivelled by the next day. There are millions of the things in the fields, but growing them in pots is impossible. Who would have thought? I know I’m not much of a gardener, but I thought even I would be able to grow grass. Apparently not.

Thanks for reading. Hope you get your dose of healthy veg today.
Take care.
Love, Anne x