Chicken Tractor, or, Meat Sounds

The chicken tractor is built. It only took a few hours to do, and now we can finally put the chickens to work on something other than breakfast. It would be nice to let them completely free range, but we have neighbors who would think that's a bad idea. What we plan to do is toss the ladies in the tractor every morning and park it on a bare garden bed or under some trees*. After years of neglect, there is a fair amount of bad shit crawling about this place and we, with the chickens' help, aim to improve the situation.

*Have you ever heard the sounds a chicken makes when it eats a really fat grub? Imagine someone eating a raw steak with their mouths open. It may not be as loud, but yeah, it's nasty. I just have to remember that the slurping makes the eggs taste better. Shit, that doesn't help at all.

Battle for the brassicas

Last year everyone of our brassicas was molested to ruin by a flock of cabbage moths and their demon worm spawn. This year we installed some spun forcefields (just say no to chemicals) and victory is ours. We just harvested our first head of broccoli and it was effing delicious.

At the First Sign of Danger

Potato beetles suck. This striped little shit did not receive the same affection as did the mice we found yesterday. Oh no siree. We squashed him (or her, I really don't care) proper.

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.

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.

Stay away bugs

Last year the cabbage worms made a mess of our brassicas. This year we made row covers. Since the brassica family produces without the assistance of pollinators, it is safe to keep them covered with a material that will only let in light, wind, and rain. We're using agribon.



The construction couldn't have been easier. We purchased one-foot sections of rebar and hammered them in around the perimeter of the beds in question. We left about three inches or so poking out and these little nubs then acted as anchors for the eventual ribbing for the structure.



The ribs are eight and ten foot lengths of recycled 3/4 inch PVC. Each end of the PVC slips over the rebar forming a frame that looks similar to that of an old covered wagon.



We couldn't find agribon wide enough to span the width of the beds with the ribs so we fastened two lengths together with clothes pins. After draping them over the ribs we weighed down the edges with strategically placed rocks. The whole shebang cost about $25. All that's left to do is keep our fingers crossed that no other mysterious pests materialize.

What the hell is this?

After witnessing the fantastic results of Meg's pruning the other day, we thought we would scope out any other trees that need some lopper love. On our journey we spied a mass of eggs left by some kind of insect mathematician. They're cool looking, but if it's bad I want to squish it. Chances are it's a pest (that's just the way this place works), but if it so happens to be a pest eater, well then I think we may want to let it live (I'm convinced that God is a gardener).

If any of you know what in the blazes these damn things might be, before they hatch, please send us a shout.

Brassicas and Homemade Cloches

Our brassicas have found their way into the garden. In the bed at the top of the photo we have six broccoli and six white cabbage and in the bed at the lower portion of the photo we have six Brussels sprouts and six red cabbages. We grouped them together like this for both protection and production purposes. If we can, I think we may try to squeeze some sage in there as well. We'll see.

Last year cabbage worms destroyed our brassicas, leaving very little for us to actually harvest. This year we purchased floating row covers to keep out the moths that lay the eggs that eventually become the kraut eatin' worms. From what we've read in books and heard at the farmer's market, row covers are extremely effective. However there is one set back and that is they also keep out beneficial insects that are necessary for pollination with some plants.

Luckily brassicas don't need to be pollinated to produce the goods. We figured that if we kept all the brassica beds free of plants that need pollinating we wouldn't need to worry. ( I know, we're doing rocket science over here.) Sage is also a deterrent of cabbage moths so we may plant some of it around the edges to discourage any insect sneakiness.

Another bit or protection we are looking for is against the elements. Although we hardened our plants off, we wanted to play it safe in case there were any surprise temperature drops in the next couple of days. Since the end of last year's growing season, Meg's parents have been saving water and milk jugs for us so we could carve them into cloches.


After we finished planting and had a little lunch, I set to work with our trusty utility knife and cut the bottoms off of twenty four jugs. It is now three days later and they are doing awesome. Our average lows at night have been around 38°. We figure that by Thursday the plants should be completely hardened off and we can remove the cloches and save them for our tomatoes and peppers.

What's Eating You?

One of the many things we've learned since we started gardening is that with the great joys there are also extreme aggravations. This property can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. Our recent bit of fury comes from a mysterious pest that is eating the pea sprouts.

I think we can rule out groundhogs, deer, and rabbits. There is just too much fence for that to be a possibility. Meg thought perhaps that is was the work of squirrels, but what ever it is, it left the seed. Actually there doesn't seem to be any mammal amounts of digging at all. I did see an ant colony, but it was in another bed all together. I know they're industrious, but would they really travel that far for a little green grub?

If you can't tell, we are at a loss with this one. Now I know the photo of the eaten sprout isn't the best, but it was the best I could do. If any of you have a theory about what it might be, please send a remedy our way.

Aha

Recently, Kylee at Our Little Acre posted about cedar-apple rust, a disease that lives alternately on cedar trees and apples trees. The trees take turns re-infecting one another via airborne spores that look like rust. We have lots of cedar trees, and we also have lots of totally messed up apple trees. Hmm...

Even though the tree funk in Kylee's post didn't look like anything I had seen around here, I had sort of a lightbulb moment after I saw the pictures and did some more research. Turns out that cedar-apple rust can take various forms, all of which involve some kind of strange, orange growth on trees in the cedar family. One of those forms is that of a freaky alien brain.


Looks like we're growing our very own tree brain. The little spikes are rust spores, which swell up and float away from time to time, especially after a rain. The spores then attach themselves to nearby apple trees, unless you're lucky enough (as Kylee is) to have rust-immune Red Delicious trees. As far as a plan of attack, our options are either to:

1. Cut down every cedar tree in at least a two-mile radius (will not happen)
2. Remove and dispose of every tree brain we can find (might happen, at least a little)

The apple trees here always get a fairly large amount of rust on the fruit, though no one has ever done anything preventative in the past. It will be interesting to see if our attacking the tree brains this year has any effect on the apple crop. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

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.

New Toy!

Last year we grew big, beautiful cabbages and broccoli that were filled with big, horrendous cabbage worms. It was pretty gross, and we hardly got to eat any of it. Since hand-picking the dumb bugs off did not work, we decided to try a new approach: floating row covers.

We ordered a 7ft x 50ft cover from Fedco, and it showed up in the mail a couple days ago. This stuff is so light! I suppose that's to be expected, but neither of us had any firsthand experience with row covers, so we were surprised. I think it's going to work really well to keep the cabbage moths, and in turn the cabbage worms, away.

A pot of African violets testing out the new row cover

Got deer? Got bamboo?

Then sharpen the bamboo into spears and kill the deer! Or build a fence.

Deer have been stomping around our garlic patch and threatening to turn our tidy rows of bulbs into mush. We don't really want venison that's been raised on the neighbors' ChemLawn grass and Miracle Gro shrubbery, so we decided against the sharpened spears and went with a fence instead.

There is nothing the deer particularly want from the garlic garden—it just provides a convenient shortcut for them to take when they move from chewing off the tops of our blueberry bushes to rolling around on the herbs. Our fence basically needed to provide enough of a barrier that the deer would walk around the garden rather than through it, so we planned a fence that would be tall enough to keep them from jumping over it.

The first order of business was a trip to the bamboo forest.


Bamboo will be the first thing we plant at future house. We use it for practically every single garden project we do, and it's plentiful, cheap, and pretty. The above picture was taken yesterday—while the rest of the area is still in gray and brown winter mode, the bamboo is a nice cheery green, like it always is. We chopped down about a dozen tall pieces and dragged them over to the garlic, where we proceeded to attach 6-foot bamboo poles to metal stakes and pound them into the ground around the perimeter of the garden.

Then we took looong pieces of bamboo and tied them to the uprights, parallel to the ground, so they went the whole way around the garden (minus opening we left at one corner). We ended up with sort of a bamboo split-rail fence. For extra insurance we ran pieces of twine between the bamboo, so that the deer won't be tempted to climb through the gaps.


Now, let's hope it works.

While Huffing Sage

I have no idea how to introduce this post...
I was gathering some sage and thyme this afternoon for a batch of cabbage and potato soup. Although this is all we have going on in our garden, other than some root veggies, I do like to hang out in there and mentally map out our possible plant rotation.

So there I was, huffing sage, staring off into space, cogitated, when I realized, "Man we are going to need a shitload of nasturtium seeds." You see, our squashes (oh yeah, all of them) were eradicated by squash bugs. After the disaster we discovered that nasturtiums are great companions to squash plants, specifically to keep away these types of pests. As I was daydreaming about our garden for next year I realized that we are planning to have a good deal of squash in all sorts of varieties. Since the squash bug will suck on anything in the squash family I figured that we were going to need, you got it, a shitload of nasturtiums.

Meg and I have been trying our best to save seeds this year and have done fairly well in our quest. Now most of our garden is cleared out and turned, but there are some flowerbed corpses that still have not been scoured for seeds. I ventured to the shade garden area to see if I could scrounge up some yellow-nasturtium seeds, but soon realized that I really wasn't too thrilled with digging through all kinds of frozen debris for little brain-looking seeds. However, I did manage to grab a few more cardinal climber seeds (pictured above) that were dangling nearby.

We Meant Well

The plan was that we were going to plant a healthy amount of fall crops and when the temperatures began to fall we would cover those crops with some nifty new row houses. As you can see in the top photo, the row house construction went rather well. However, what the bottom photo shows is that the actual planting didn't go as planned.

Actually the planting did start out quite well, but we ran into some unforeseeable mishaps between the time of the first planting of greens in late August to when the covers went up in late October. The first unfortunate incident happened to our crop of greens. September brought about some unusually hot days in southeastern Pennsylvania. The heat plus one neglected watering and the entire crop fried. Then our bush beans and peas fell victim to some deer and rabbits with a case of the munchies. It's odd, we never had any problems with deer and very few issues with rabbits, then in one night our garden became a salad bar. By the time we patched the holes in the fence where the rabbits squeezed through and raised its height from five feet to seven feet to keep out the deer, the window for planting was over. We planted some desperation chard (because it's wicked hardy and Mmm, Mmm, delicious) sometime in October and covered the bean and pea corpses with our fingers crossed for a miracle.

No such miracle arrived. What we are now left with are some carrots, sage, spring chard (wicked hardy), and some mighty fine looking row covers.