Top o' the Coop 6/14/08

The top of the chicken coop offers the best view of the garden, so every once in a while we take photos from up there. It's a good way to see what's going on.

An Unfortunate Disturbance

It was effing hot today. Our greens weren't to happy about it so we brought out the shade cloth to kind of ease the pain. For convenience we keep the cloth balled up in the lower shed. I carried the wadded mass into the garden and when I unfurled it I saw a large mouse fall to the ground and scurry through the fence.

As I started cursing out the little bastard for chewing a hole in the sheet, I heard a little squeak that instantly made me feel remorse. I knew what it was and a short scan of the ground revealed what I feared. The little bastard that ate a hole in our sheet was nesting with a pair of her own little bastards.

When I showed the tots to Meg, she asked if I was going to kill them. I answered no, even though I knew I already had. I set them down where I saw their mother retreat (hopeful), but when I checked back a few hours later they were still there, just kind of squirming a bit.

I don't know why I felt sad, they really are bastards. I think perhaps it's because they never had the chance to live and really piss me off. Oh well. Little bastards.

Seed Saving

We had some left over parsnips in the garden that managed to survive the winter. Those whose roots we didn't use for pencils (Because they're woody, get it? Oh dag, that's entertaining.) were left in the ground to go to seed. From the looks of these heads, they should be going to flower within the next week. What we do after that, we're not quite sure, because we've never done this before. We'll be sure to let you know what's up as we find out.

Companion Planting and a Flashy New Trellis

The tomatoes are in. The bed in the photo is 4' by 18'. There are eight tomato plants (a little less than half our stock) in the bed, which I know isn't very many, but they will be sharing the space with four varieties of poling beans, red onions, leeks, and a shit load of basil. Well, maybe not a shit load, but a fare amount none the less.

We're really happy with how well our new trellis turned out. The design is mostly from something Meg found on the internet and in the latest issue of Organic Gardening. However, the modifications are all Future House. It did take us a few hours to build, but it's nothing more than bamboo from our property and salvaged string (the whole thing didn't cost a cent). I'm certain that by the end of this year I'll be able to tie knots like a sailor (which is fitting, because I tend to curse like one).

And then there was corn

Seeds are erupting everywhere in our garden. We could do a whole photo show of the various beans that sprouted since Monday. Two days ago we got our first signs of corn. I think we'll have no problem hitting knee high by the fourth of July.

Good fences make good neighbors, and all that.

This is a long one.

Our neighbor is crazy. And I'm not using that word in the colloquial sense, as when you sometimes describe a person as "crazy," when what you really mean is that the person is emotional, or passionate, or eccentric. No, our neighbor is crazy.

We have numerous stories to back this up, but one has been particularly enduring. Last summer, before the craziness had fully presented itself, she came to talk to us while we were working outside. She mentioned the pine trees that are on her property—but right up against our garden—and she asked if they blocked out our sun too much. They didn't block the sun much, but they did hang way over the garden and drop pine cones and crap all the time. She said she'd get her husband to cut them back so we didn't have to—but we could if we wanted to.

So, last October, I cut back the branches that were coming into the garden.

That was fine until one day in March when I went outside to feed the chickens and heard her screaming at our landlord, "This is all I have, Christopher! This. Is. ALL. I. HAAAAAAAVE!!" She was talking about the trees, of course, which she had just noticed. Needless to say, I got the hell out of there.

A few weeks later her husband cut back the trees even more than I did, and she came over while we were outside to shout, "Hey! You call that bein' a neighbor? 'Cause I call that NOT BEIN' a neighbor!" Oh, well then. Ever since, we've been privy to dirty looks and shouted conversations of, "Hey! When's that fence guy comin'?" Yesterday she stood on her porch in her pajamas and stared at me through a gap in the trees for ten minutes. It's been fun.

Today, though, the fence guys came. They were very nice and they loved our garden, but most importantly they put up a 7-foot tall privacy fence (which necessitated cutting back the trees even more, incidentally). Sadly, the fence obstructs our view of the old trampoline, the plastic tarp stuck up in a tree, the trash cans in the middle of the yard, and the neighbor sunbathing on the driveway. But that's the price we'll have to pay. For, you know, not bein' neighbors. At least we'll have the memories.

Diversity in salads

This year's first pea flower.

Squash Beds

An executive decision was made last year that all of our squash and mellon type plants would be direct seeded this year. They are now all in. We spent the better part of the day clearing out all of the beds to hopefully get rid of any lingering squash bug larvae. The grass has been cut for the first time this year and we used the clippings for mulch. This photo gives a pretty good view of the five beds we planted (they're the green fuzzy ones). In each bed we also planted a few nasturtium seeds to help deter pests and eventually add some peppery zing to our salads. This now marks that 18 of our 22 beds are planted. All that's left are our peppers, tomatoes and some random last minute herbs.

Back to the Future

I'm doing a major computer clean-up to make space for a new OS and a couple of programs, and I came across this top-of-the-coop photo from early July of last year:


Contrast that with this photo from a couple days ago:


Hard to believe that we'll be looking like that first photo in a month and a half.

Backyard Breakfast

This morning I went out back, gathered some eggs, harvested red oak leaf lettuce, picked some sage, and clipped a few leaves of chard. Fifteen minutes later they became breakfast. Other than the olive oil everything came from our garden/coop and it was delicious. This is one of the major reasons why we shop at home.

Thinking Way Ahead

In the world of "What ifs," Meg and I have contemplated the possibility of renting for another year or two and what that would mean for the garden. The idea we are tossing around is joining the herb garden with the vegetable garden to create what would be a 3,000 square foot backyard market.

I took this photo from the far edge of the herb garden furthest away from the vegetable garden. If you look to the far right of the photo you can see a little concrete pillar (it's a stand for the birdbath), that marks where the herb garden ends. (I know it doesn't look like much of an herb garden now, but Meg, myself, and Steveo have big plans for it's rejuvenation later this month.) The grass area from the concrete pillar to the garden fence would be double dug and fenced in. It would be a shit load of work for someone else's property, so I hope we can get out of here before it gets to that. Like I said, it's a "What if."

Shady Grove

Not too long ago we erected a sunshade to protect the bed of greens and peas. When the rest of the garden fills in we won't have a need for the contraption, but for now the high-noon sun is just a bit too much.

The set up really is as easy as it looks; we just tied a sheet to one end of the fence and ran a line from the corners of the opposite end of the sheet to the fence on the other side. The string running on the left side of the photo is attached to the fence with loops as opposed to tying it on. The loops allow us to slide the string on and off the fence posts so we can pull the shade back on cloudy days.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Squawks and Freaks Out

Although our chickens usually keep themselves quite busy in the compost production department, this weekend we put them on weed-eating duty in the garden. The idea was that, since the chickens generally try to eat everything in sight, we'd let them loose in the garden where they could chomp on weeds and bugs until they put themselves into food comas.

That idea didn't really pan out. Even though the garden is about 1200 square feet, the ladies chose to hang out in the same 4x8 bed that Kelly and I were working on. Bertha, specifically, thought that she could provide the most help by tap dancing in the tray of compost we were using to fill in the holes of our transplanted seedlings. That was actually no help at all.

We decided to change our approach. It became obvious that we should have built a chicken tractor to keep the ladies on task. As a weak substitute, we dragged out a big cage that we built a few years ago to keep a groundhog from eating our cucumbers. The cage only had room for one chicken to comfortably move around inside and Stella, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, got volunteered for the position. She was really pissed and she strutted around the cage with her chest puffed out, making noises like she was going to attack someone. We ignored her and hoped that she would calm down and start eating bugs.

She didn't. Instead, she just stared forlornly at the other chickens, who were still running around like idiots.

Stella ate no bugs, and she became increasingly pathetic as she stood and watched the other chickens enjoying their freedom on the outside. I didn't know that chickens had enough emotional complexity to become despondent, but apparently they do. It was clear that Stella wasn't going to get any work done, so we let her out after a couple of minutes.

Interestingly, she seemed to be scared straight by her ten minutes in confinement because soon after her release she was leading the other chickens on a weed-eating expedition.

Yarrr!

Back in business.

We took advantage of the 75° weather and got lots of work done in the garden today. We planted, dug, raked, weeded, watered, transplanted, composted, and started what will soon be spectacular farmers' tans. But, despite all that work, this was the biggest accomplishment of the day:

No Varmints Allowed

Last year we learned that rabbits can squeeze through incredibly small spaces. Unfortunately our lesson had to be made at the sacrifice of our entire soy bean crop and a good amount of our fall peas. I can say with vexed determination that I hate those wabbits.

To avoid further fury, Meg and I added a section of two-foot high chicken wire around the entire perimeter or the garden. The space between the wires of the original fence is about two inches and the chicken wire is, well, chicken wire. To add some extra protection we left a few inches of the fence at the bottom to bend out and away from the garden. We're hoping that this will deter burrowing.


The project took us a couple hours. My hands got all nicked to hell, but I'll live. Tomorrow we plan to plant our brassicas and I am confident those bastard varmints will have to forage elsewhere.


The chicken pen shares a fence line with the garden so we had to barricade their little play area, too. They took an invested interest in everything we did. I'm sure they could give two shits about their increased safety; they were more intent on pecking at anything that moved.

In Which Our Parsley Returns from Beyond the Grave

Don't you wish all those rocks were in your garden? I do.

We've had a really mild winter—less than ten inches of snow and an average temperature of 40°F—and the garden is loving it. Right now we have parsley, swiss chard, bok choy, kale, and lettuce that have slowly been doing their thing since the fall. Temperatures are supposed to be in the mid-50°s for the next week, so perhaps we'll be eating salads by next weekend.

We have a garden.

We talk about it a lot. Here it is:



We talk a lot about our rain barrels, too. They're pretty impressive:



We also have chickens. We love them, but they're a pain in the ass. Here are the ladies:



We have loads to blog about, including why the chickens eat our neighbor's flowers and why our red bell peppers might turn out to be junk. Stay tuned.