Wildlife, you gotta love them.

Yesterday was the day. After torturous double digging (we practice no till but this was a brand new bed in poor soil) and the application of 6 inches of compost, it was time to direct sow a ton of my cool season annuals. We are in zone 9b here so there is no risk for me starting seeds in the garden at this point. In fact, it’s still a bit hot for that. The past week we’ve been in the 90s! But cool weather is finally in the forecast, along with some rain. So I planned where I would seed based on height of the full grown plants, spacing for aesthetic purposes, etc.

I spent an hour plus yesterday morning in 90 degree heat, direct sowing everything from different varieties of California poppies, to Larkspur, California Bluebells, Lupine, varieties of poppies, penstemon and more. I marked everything and contemplated covering the whole bed with row cover. But I decided against it. Bad idea.

After many weeks of no visits from the local turkey flock, today they came by and took dust baths in various places in my newly seeded beds. Turkeys, like other birds, adore dust baths and these gals were super happy since the compost was fresh and the tilth was high. It’s a good thing I over seeded. I’m sure there are a few places where all hope is lost for those seeds but that’s okay. I’m growing tons of seedlings which can be transplanted here and I still have seed leftover.

But I did chase them off, kindly, because I really do love turkeys. They are so cute. And I covered the whole shebang with floating row cover. Once again I was super happy to have all these materials on hand because in 20 minutes, I was able to fix the problem. Ultimately, the turkeys probably did me a favor. The row cover is going to keep the seeds in a more even moisture level and germination will be better as a result, at least where the seeds weren’t disturbed by bathing beauties.