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