Some of the harvest

The garden is at the peak of the summer harvest. Everything is
overgrown, the tomato plants a looking limp, the cucumbers leaves are
drying out, and the zucchini plants are marching along, but more
slowly. The pole beans I planted late are now strangling the peppers in
their pots. Here's a photo of today's pickings (including an egg from
the chicken house).

Canning Time

The apricots ripened last week - at the same time we had a trip scheduled. We need to plan better next summer. On the way back from Mendocino County, I picked up the canning pot (vat?) shown in the photo. It can be used to process six quart-sized jars when "canning", although we mostly process pint-sized jars (six pints is one batch in the canning world). We'd been using a large kitchen pot before, which could only hold 4 pint-sized jars, so every batch took a lot longer. The jars have to be submerged in violently-boiling water for ten minutes, so the large pot shaves about twenty minutes off a batch (the ten minutes plus the time it takes for the water to boil after the jars are put in).

Last year's addition to the canning routine (besides actually starting the canning routine) was the specialized jar-grabber shown in the photo. It saved Maeve from second-degree burns, or the risk of them, when she tried extracting jars from the cauldron.

This pot holds so much water, we filled it a few days ago and processed a batch one evening. We saved the water, but can't save the heat. Even so, the water in the pot was still warm the next morning. So far, Maeve has made a batch of nectarine jam, two of peach, and two of apricot jam.
We also made one batch of pickled cauliflower (your mouth is watering now, I'll bet) from the heads I grew in the garden (small heads, I admit).

Not all is hunky-dory out back. The basil I planted barely grew, as did the lettuce. Out of two packs of Basil seed, about three purple plants appeared. They enjoyed life for a few days and then croaked. I'm not sure the lettuce ever appeared. So far, my attempts to direct seed those
plants are failing. I don't know if it's the heat, the soil, or a brown thumb.

I put about eight pepper plants in pots that are now hanging out in the garden, where the water can reach them. Three have died but the rest are looking pretty good. I'll try to post a photo of the diseased peppers (the good ones too, I suppose).

The corn is coming along - it didn't get mowed down this year by cutworms like it did last year.

Some of the cherry tomatoes are now ripe, and the plants are growing great. We pretty much have a hedgerow of tomato plants out back now - some are approaching four feet tall (now that I'm tying them to stakes).

The zucchini is growing like wildfire, as it has the past few years. I've started passing it off to the neighbors (I feel like I live the joke: "Why do Vermonters lock their cars in the summer? So someone doesn't leave a zucchini on the front seat"). I gave two to the neighbors next door, and softened the blow by adding some apricots and plumbs. They claim to like zucchini.

- Bruce

The Seed Bank

I stopped by the Seed Bank in Petaluma on the way back from a trip. This heirloom seed store, owned by Baker Heirloom Seeds, occupies an old bank building in downtown Petaluma. The interior is stunning, and almost all the sell are seeds. They've got some standards (Kentucky Wonder Beans, for example) but many that I've never heard of. I talked seeds, and eventually chickens, with the woman behind the counter. I asked for seeds I could plant now (late June/early July) and were interesting - not the standards. I ended up buying "Lollo Rossa" lettuce, "Romanesco Italia" brocolli, Chioggia beets, Squash Lemon ("the size of a lemon, with huge yields"), and Purple Podded Pole beans. I'll try to get these seeds in the ground over the next few days. First, I've got to harvest the Cauliflower, which is finally ready for harvest. I've been getting tired of having those plants taking up space for what seems an inordinate amount of time.

- Bruce

Chicken Hide and Seek

Snowball, our black Modern Game Bantam, took to playing hide-and-seek the past two days. We let the flock roam the backyard when we're home and we put them in at dusk. Saturday evening, Snowball was nowhere to be found. The other three hens trotted on into the enclosure, and Henny Penny settled on the roost where she always sleeps with Snowball beside her, but Snowball wasn't there. We searched our yard, our neighbors' yards, trees, and the sidewalks. No chicken anywhere. Once it turned dark, we gave up, for finding a black chicken at night would be almost impossible and she'd have settled down somewhere by then and be hard to find anyway.

The next morning, at 6:30 AM, there she was in the backyard, looking for grubs. We corralled her with the others. That evening, she vanished again and returned this morning at 7. Now she's grounded; we've let the other chickens out but not her. I suspect she dug a nest somewhere under a bush, maybe laid an egg or two there, and is calling it home. We've called her home and will hope she drops the habit after a few days of being cooped up.

- Bruce

80 lbs of lettuce!

Wow, Michelle Obama's garden has produced 80 lbs of lettuce! Ours has probably produced about three, not counting the heads of romaine that started fighting it out with the beets. I'm going to pull the beets this weekend, I think, and see what else is growing in that jungle. I pulled the pea plants (best peas we've ever had) last week in preparation for planting corn. After pulling the peas, I left the fencing open so the chickens could wander in, scratch around, and eat bugs and grubs. I've also dumped a lot of compost in there for the chickens to spread. I just closed the fencing again to see if the birds can find a way in, now that they've been re-introduced to the wonders of the garden. I don't want them going in once I've put corn, beans, and basil in.

When you've gotta lay...

Henney Penney, our Rhode Island Red, came to Home Town Days with us. She was a hands-on exhibit in our 4H information booth, situated under some shady oak trees. She scratched, ate bugs, and tried to explore far and wide. In turn, children stroked her feathers and watched the chicken work.

Henney Penney, to our knowledge, hasn't laid in four days (although she may have been laying in a hidden spot in the yard somewhere). I pulled her home, housed in a transport cage, in a red wagon. As soon as we turned into our driveway, she started clucking and scratching to get out. I slipped her into the chicken coop and she dashed up the ramp into the henhouse.

I heard her scratching for a moment in a laying box and, then minutes later, she laid a large brown egg.

Tomato ID's

This photo shows the tomato plants in the backyard, with the ones I can still identify labeled. The plants are protected from the chickens by various crates, cages, and other devices. The photo is a few weeks old.

I'll post a current photo in a day or two - some of the plants have outgrown their houses, and the plant protected by the cinderblock is now growing through it (I think the block did that plant wonders - it was protected from the wind and kept warm by the surrounding, solar-heated
ceramic material.) One of the marauding chickens is shown in the photo.

Slugs are slipping in

I pulled some weeds and planted a cucumber plant that I found forgotten in a pot amidst the weeds and lettuce. The Romaine that looked so good as young, packed together plants a few weeks ago has now turned into some rather spindly plants, situated amongst less spindly plants. I harvested some of the lettuce and submerged it in a pot of water inside (slugs crawl out of the lettuce and up to the surface when submerged, so it's a good way to find the suckers before they crawl out of a salad bowl, which has happened to us).  I pulled some of the spindly lettuce and tossed it, with weeds, on the compost pile.

Three slugs (aka gastropod mollusks) turned up, so I went out on the deck, called the chickens up, and fed two small ones to Snowball. Snowball was a bit taken aback at the size of the third slug, but Henny Penny arrived on the scene eager to help, so she got that one. In a few weeks, I'll pull all the lettuce and peas and then give the chickens a few days in the garden to de-pest it. After that, I'll put in corn, beans, and other stuff (to-be-decided).

Planted Cukes

I put cucumber and squash seedlings out a month ago or so, and they all promptly died (except one plant). I think I cooked some of the plants under empty five-gallon plastic water bottles that I put over the plants to protect them.

Today, I put some cucumber seeds out in mounds, just the way the planting instructions said. I've never succeeded with mounds before, as they tend to dry out and it's hard to keep the cucumber mounds moist so that the seeds sprout. I used compost for the mounds, which should hold more water, so we'll see how they do. I put plastic crates over the mounds to keep the chickens from diving in immediately, as a good pile of fresh compost is as good as it gets to a chicken.

I also potted seeds indoors in homemade potting soil (peat moss, vermiculite, and some fertilizer) as a fall back if the outdoor plants don't take. The outdoor cucumbers are Botanical Interests Homemade Pickles ("arguably the best cucumber available for pickles", which we'll try making this summer if all goes well). Indoors, I planted Spacemaster ("a very compact, bushy plant that won't take over your entire garden") and Summer Squash Cocozelle, touted as "a striped Italian beauty" that is "the race car of the vegetable garden". Stand back! I'll transplant them in a few weeks after they've sprouted and grown some leaves.

The hardest part of potting the seeds was sneaking out on the back deck so the chickens wouldn't hear me. The chickens come running and make a nuisance of themselves if they hear someone on the deck. They caught on during my last trip out and charged up the steps. They then stood outside the door, preened, and stared in as we ate dinner.

- Bruce

Broccoli Picking

I've had a pretty paltry broccoli crop this year. The chickens took out
a plant or two and for some reason others didn't survive to adulthood.
I think I've got some cauliflower coming along - we'll see what my
teenage plants produce. Here's two broccoli photos.

One shows a big sprig that I should have picked sooner (see the buds starting to bloom).
The other shows a plant that was moments away from getting picked.

Some of these plants will keep putting up small sprigs and can continue
to be harvested for a few weeks. The amounts are good for salads or, I
suppose, omelets. Some plants will produce a huge, several-pound head. I
don't think I'm getting any of those this year.

- Bruce

Garden Frames and the Peril of Floating Row Covers

It's survival of the fittest out there, and in our California garden, plant seedlings are not the fittest. Slugs, snails, birds, cutworms, wind, cold, and weeds all take their toll, with the pests probably doing the most damage. Floating row covers are supposedly the way to go. I got some of that fabric a few years ago, and, let's say, the results were mixed. I don't have the patience to deal with lightweight fabric, finding the hoops, and weighing down all the edges (which somehow get caught in my shoes and ripped out of the ground the next time I go in the garden) the way you're supposed to with those covers.

So, I had a great idea. I'd make wooden frames, attach the floating row cover fabric to it, and just lay it in the garden over my seeds. I got some 2x2 redwood, along with some 1x2 (or so) redwood, built a bunch of frames, carefully put the row-cover material over them (wrapping it around the 1*2 sections and nailing them down so there'd be good strain relief on the fabric), and then planting some seeds and putting a frame over them. It looked great, that frame did, out there. It even worked! I got a great patch of lettuce and beets from seed, without having to sprout indoors and transplant.

Sadly, I think the reason the frame and fabric worked is I put it out in winter, and the fabric only lets rainwater through. It doesn't rain here in the spring, summer, and fall, and the fabric doesn't seem to let water from the sprinklers through. I kid you not - I even took some photos to show the frames on our driveway (above) and how dry the driveway was after I sprayed the frames from the hose. If you care, I could explain why the frames don't let sprinkler water through (at least my theory), but the bottom line was I had a lot of seeds that weren't sprouting under the frames. Sometimes, the garden would be wet everywhere except where the frames covered it!

Time to turn to the neighbors. I decided to replace the row-cover material with window screening. I figured someone would have old window screens in their garage that no longer fit any windows on their house, so I asked around. Well, a neighbor had a roll of screen tucked away. He traded it to me for some lettuce (I'll drop some eggs by, too) and I've started upgrading the frames. One photo shows a frame with the screen next to one with the row-cover after both had been sprayed by a hose. Low-and-behold, the frame with the screen (on the left in the photo below) lets water through and the row-cover didn't. (If that's not science in action, I don't know what is).

I'll keep a few row-cover covered screens for winter, when they should keep the soil warmer and rain will keep things damp. Otherwise, I'm converting most of my frames. They'll keep the pests away and should really increase the number of plants that survive childhood.

- Bruce

Our Grand Dame- Henny Penny

Henny Penny rules our roost. When you keep chickens suddenly all those cliches about "being broody", and "pecking order" start to make sense. We bought Henny Penny as a chick last winter so she is almost 18 months old. She lays a beautiful brown egg every day most of the year and alternate days during the winter.

We named out blog after Henny Penny because she is our trick chicken. She comes walking up the stairs onto our deck (a full flight) and pecks at our back door to ask for treats. She'll do just about anything for a tasty raisin or dried blueberry. (We get our organic raisins from the Benzler Farm in Fresno.) Since she has had such tremendous success, the other girls have followed her example and some afternoons I'll look over when I hear a light knock to find four chickens waiting impatiently for us to open the door. Henny Penny keeps the rest of the flock, and us, in line.

Meet our girls- Snowball

You'll have figured out from earlier posts that not only are we are growing food in our small suburban yard but we are keeping chickens. We have four laying hens- the maximum allowed by local law. Each has a distinct personality and we find ourselves watching "chicken tv" out the kitchen windows. Our eldest chicken is not the top of the pecking order, but she is a pretty quirky bird. Snowball is a black Modern Game bantam, purchased so the kids would have a small bird to handle when showing poultry at the County Fair. Snowball was one of a pair of bantams but her "sister", named Flaming-y (for her penchant for standing on one food) died last summer of a prolapsed vent. Snowball lays one small white egg every two or three days. We use two of these eggs to replace one in recipes.

My favorite thing about Snowball is that she is a talker. She murmurs to herself as she walks about the yard making small noises almost constantly. She is attached to Henny Penny and when they get separated, Snowball talks loudly letting us know that she is not comfortable with things the way they are. Maybe she is like a pure-bred dog or cat because she seems like something of a prima dona.

Planting a Tomato Plant, Fending Off the Chickens

Here's how I planted a tomato plant today. Basically, I dug a hole, filled it with water, and poured in homemade potting soil (our soil has a lot of clay in it, so I want something that provides drainage around the roots). Then I plucked the leaves off the bottom half of the tomato plant, pulled the entire root-mass out of the nursery pot, and planted it as deep as I could (the top leaves are just at ground level). That lets the plant develop roots along the buried stem and makes for a
stronger plant (or so they say). I sunk an empty flower pot next to it that I'll fill with water periodically. That pot will deliver water deeper into the soil and hopefully reduct the amount of watering I need to do. I finished filling in with soil.

The photo above shows one chicken keeping an eye on the hole - there's no telling what the shovel will turn up. You can see the plant-protection devices next to the chicken. If they weren't there, the young tomato plants would turn into chicken food.

I dug the hole, now I'm filling it with water to give the plant something to drink when it goes into the hole.

I put in homemade potting soil (only because that's what I had quickly available). I didn't want to reuse the soil I dug out of the hole because it has so much clay that it doesn't drain well. The photo shows that the potting soil is suspended in the water, which hadn't drained out of the hole yet (due to the clay). That pot comes off before the plant goes in the ground.

When I take the plant out of the plastic pot, I'll bury the stem in soil all the way up to the bottom set of leaves. I'll pinch that bottom branch (or two) off to put as much of the stalk in the ground as possible, so it can all form roots. The plant will grow just fine.

Now I'm putting the plant in the hole, so the leaves will be just above surface level. I'll fill the hole with more soil, so there's still a bit of a depression to collect water. I'll also dig an empty flower pot into the ground next to the plant so I can fill the pot with water and the water will trickle deeper into the ground.

Here's the pot going in.

The final planted plant, under the empty milk crate the keeps the chickens away.

As I planted, I fended off the chickens. They love when I garden.
Henney Penney knows the best pickings are in the fresh dirt, so she's
underfoot always. The two Ameracauna's have a real taste for tomato
leaves, so I have to protect the plants (you can see them next to the
caged plant). They all love to scratch in the dry soil around the
tomatos, so it's become a real challenge to keep the plants alive.

Photographer: Anya

Author: Bruce

Boring Stuff

Now, this is a post about boring stuff (a.k.a yard work). Yesterday (4/18/09) we did about 2.5 hours of yard work total. Let me tell you that was one of the more boring experiences of having a farm. We mostly weeded the front yard, not a very pretty site. We also planted a lemon tree and some flowers in the evening while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on NPR. That was an enlightening experience.
-Anya

Vermiculite and Make-It-Yourself Potting Soil

I've gotten tired of buying bags of potting soil. There's umpteen choices at the local box stores and garden centers, but I doubt the seeds care all that much what they grow in. Also, I've found some of the potting materials I've tried don't work all that well. They form a water-impermeable layer on top and when I water the pots, the water doesn't soak in.

Somewhere, I read that all you need for potting soil is a 50-50 mix of Vermiculite (an expanded form of mica) and peat moss, with maybe some slow-acting fertilizer thrown in. I gave that a try and, low-and-behold, the seeds grow! Now the problem is finding vermiculite. Most garden centers have cute little bags of it, which is fine, but I had visions of saving money and those little bags cost as much as a bag of potting soil. An online search for vermiculite didn't turn anything up. My closest garden center (Home Depot, ironically) doesn't have large bags. I asked about special-ordering it at one specialty garden center, but their supplier had stopped carrying large bags.

I put the big-bag concept on the back burner, but one day on my way into the big-box Home Depot I spied large bags of Vermiculite, just sitting there. I shelled out $27 or so and now I'm set for a while. The photo shows the bag I bought, along with the organic fertilizer I've been using. Of course, I'm out of peat moss, but that's easier to find.

My potting soil recipe.

Ingredients:

Some vermiculite
Some peat moss
Much less organic fertilizer (say 5-3-3).

Put some vermiculite into a five gallon bucket. Add about the same
amount of peat moss (you can go 60-40 on the peat moss/vermiculite mix
if you want to save vermiculite). Mix it. Add a bit of fertilizer
(optional) and mix some more.

Tight Lettuce

I ran across a column today in the Wall Street Journal, loosely titled:  How much can you save growing vegetables?

The bottom line is "a lot", if you don't spend a lot of money on capital costs (such as tools, raised bed, soil, etc). Here, we pay for water, also. Still, spending a few dollars on seeds for many pounds of vegetables, is a pretty good deal (of course, there's the work and occasional crop failure to face).

I try to save where I can, but I do spend money on some things. I've found some tools (like the shovel I leave in the compost area) at yard sales. I keep an eye out for scrap lumber for garden frames and other useful, junked items, left at curbside. Now I want a few old window screens to build more protective screens for my seeds (more about that another day).

What caught my eye in the article was "Plant the lettuce tight enough, and there won't be room for any [weeds]". The photo shows my latest attempt at fighting off the slugs, snails, birds, and other garden evils to grow lettuce from seed in the garden. My attempt succeeded! The weeds manage to poke out here and there, but you can see Romaine packed hip-to-hip, with beets and a "Red Sails" lettuce grabbing space also. I'll pull the weeds this weekend.

Photo of White House Garden

Here's a photo of the White House Garden, taken through the fence in
front of the WH. The photo is not great shakes, but it shows how
Michelle Obama chose a site that can be partially seen by the public.
It's not hidden away somewhere, which it could easily have been. I don't
know how much sun it gets. They were preparing for the "Easter Egg Roll"
the day we were there.

- Bruce

Front Yard Garden - White House

We visited Washington DC yesterday and walked the Mall. We made sure to walk past the White House (we'd tried to get tour tickets, but failed) and low-and-behold, there on the White House lawn (the front lawn, no less) is the new White House garden. It's partially visible from the street, and (garden-envy alert) it's bigger than ours. Of course, they have more resources, including school children and a staff. Kudos to Michelle Obama for getting out there and digging in with this tremendous promotion for backyard gardens.

I'm advocating White House chickens next.

Ten years ago, or so

After we moved into our house ten years ago, I surveyed the small, overgrown vegetable garden the previous owners had left. New to California, the land of milk and honey, I pulled some of the weeds out and dropped some lettuce seeds in. Between the forthcoming winter rains and the reasonably decent soil, I figured salad was in our future.

I watched and sure enough, things grew. Not knowing which sprouts, if any, were lettuce I let it all grow. Lo and behold, I had raised a fresh batch of weeds with no lettuce in sight. I gave it time and, one day a few months later, I surveyed a crop of healthy, ugly-looking weeds and wondered what to do with the patch. Glancing down at my feet, I saw a lettuce plant that had somehow grown and was ready to be picked.

Years later, looking back, I'm amazed that that one plant made it. It's a survival-of-the-fittest world out there, with slugs and snails itching to chow down on fresh vegetables. There are any number of weeds able to out-compete the weaklings sown by man. Birds are raring to snack, and in some cases squirrels partake to. It's man-against-nature, and in our most recent year, a man-against-chicken activity.