Raised Beds, perhap

I've had it with lugging compost around in five gallon pails. Our compost pile is kind of awkward to get to with a cart of any kind, but moving a few lbs of compost at a time wasn't very productive. I did some research. Wheel barrows are too tippy. A stable garden cart looks attractive, but some cost almost $200.

There is a $50 cart out there, and our local Ace Hardware had one collecting dust near the back (it was filled with other stuff and obviously in the way). I asked how much it was worth to them to have me get it out of there, and I got a pretty good deal so I went home with one of these Rubbermaid "Tough Carts."

Now I can work with industrial quantities of compost, at least compared to the five-gallon bucket days. I quickly filled up the garden, which thrilled the chickens but led to a lot of dirt getting flung onto the adjoining walkway. Now, looking for a new home for the compost, I've started putting in raised beds.

The beds are walled in with 2x8's that I got from a recycled lumber place (Whole House Building Supply in East Palo Alto). Ok, I'm going to forget the topic-sentence for this paragraph and digress for a moment. Whole House Building Supply is a great place. They've got a lumber yard with well marked boards nicely organized. They'll also make things to order, like tractor chicken coops or outhouses (I presume, but I doubt there's much demand here). There's an outdoor weight-lifting area. It's probably for employees only, but it didn't look like anyone would stop me if I wanted to move some metal up and down. They have a bunch of chickens wandering around, too. There are also plenty of building materals, like windows, molding, and hardware.

Back to the raised beds. Most of the walls are up now (they are only about eight or twelve inches high). I've haven't filled them much yet because the compost isn't fully compost yet. I think it will be in good shape in a few weeks, but now it's a soggy mound of moderately recognizable leaves and straw (which is progress because a few weeks ago the leaves and straw were clearly identifiable). I planted some broccoli in one of the walled-off but not filled areas. I put a hacked-off gallon milk jug over each plant (to keep the plant warmer) and the a ring of wire-cloth around each milk jug (to keep the chickens away). Now that the broccoli plants are snug and fortressed, they should do pretty well.

Heirloom Seed Order

I ordered heirloom tomatoes, cukes, beets, and a few other things from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They arrived a few weeks ago. I put some out in the garden and seeded a lot of tomatoes in "previously owned" flats (that came with some seedlings I bought). A few of the tomato seeds have sprouted.

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.