Garlic Progression

The garlic that I planted last fall is doing very well.  It pushed up through the mulch in late January and has been growing steadily ever since.  Originally I had it covered by plastic laying directly on the mulch for the winter but once I noticed the leaves against the plastic I changed it into a hoop house to give it room to grow.  Under the protection of the hoop house it grew very well.  All of the protection for these plants was mostly because of the chickens that have been busy scratching up the garden all winter.  I didn't want them to eat my hard work before I could harvest it for myself.  The garlic didn't really need to be undercover since it is an incredibly hardy plant and can survive some pretty chilly temps, but I think it thrived even better with the warming effect of the hoop house.  Now that the weather is warming even more, I didn't want it to get too hot under the hoop house, so I decided that I should let it grow in the open air.  I still had to protect it from the chickens of course, so I used a roll of chicken wire to cage it in the frame of the hoop house that previously covered it.

I am excited to see how well it has been growing now that I don't have to peek under the plastic covering anymore.  There were a few plants that were struggling to push through the grass mulch that I laid over the bed last fall, so I helped them out and hopefully they will soon catch up with the rest of the happy plants.  Many of them are over eight inches tall and have more than four leaves, so I would say they are doing just fine.  I expect they will send up scapes in a couple of months and then be ready to harvest a few more weeks after that.  I am so happy to see my first crop of the year looking so healthy and strong.  Hopefully the rest of the garden will follow their great example.

Feathering Out

These little guys are getting bigger by the day.  They are one month old now and their feathers are coming in nicely.  I think I got a good mix from my flock  because I seem to have at least one chick from each kind of hen that I have.  I am assuming that the dark colored chicks have the barred rock rooster for the father and the light colored chicks are from the Deleware rooster.

I am still not sure how many pullets or cockerels I have, but I think that at least two of the smaller black chicks are going to be hens.  One chick in particular has very interesting colors and I am thinking that it may turn out to be a rooster in the long run, but I won't know for several more weeks.

I expect that it won't be long until their heads are fully feathered out and by then they will be ready to start living outside.  Maybe only a couple more weeks.  They will outgrow their brooder before too long anyway, so the timing will be perfect and the weather will be milder for the young chicks.

Spring Yard Prep

Garden season is nearly upon us, so I spent many hours this weekend cleaning up the yard.  I removed the corn stalks and sunflower stems from the long beds at the front of the yard and burned them along with any tumbleweeds and other dried plant matter that I could easily remove from the ground.  I am planning on tilling these beds again this year, but I don't want to bind up the tiller with tough stems, so burning them was an easy way to clear them up.  I also need to go through and dig up any more hidden carrots or parsnips that overwintered in these rows.  I used those crops to fill in any bare areas in the rows last summer.  I choose crops with tap roots so they would help to break up the heavy clay soils that I have in my yard, making it easier to work with in future years.  Before I could get to digging and tilling in this area I had to remove the drip lines that I left under mulch all winter.  I didn't intend to leave them out, but I never seemed to find any time to take care of it until now.  To make things easier on myself, I simply rolled up the lines  where they were, so I can just put them back out over the rows once the soil is prepped for planting again.

The other big chore in the yard was taking some of the tarps off the chicken coop.  It has been getting fairly warm during the day and the girls could use the extra ventilation.  

I still left some covering for the back and sides of the pen because the nights are still chilly and they could use the wind block.  It will also give them some shaded space during the heat of the day.

The nesting boxes off the back were completely uncovered mostly because the tarp that I had covering it was in tatters and wasn't doing much good anyway.  The house is solid enough on it's own and the girls can use it for sturdy shelter if the weather gets really bad.  An added bonus is now getting eggs will be easier since I won't have to fight the tarps to open the back door.

Forgotten Carrots

I was turning over the last of the garden beds to get ready for spring and I made a pleasant discovery.   In the bed where my brussel sprouts grew last year I had planted carrots in the bed, but forgot about them as the brussel sprouts took over the bed with their huge leaves.  In the winter after everything died back, the carrots hid silently in the soil protected from extreme cold and wind.  After I pulled the remains of the brussel sprouts from the ground I began to turn the soil using a shovel.  The first few shovel fulls were nothing but dirt and weeds, but then I came across something bright orange in the soil.  Then I remembered that I did plant carrot seeds in this bed.  There were many small carrots that I found as I dug, but there were some good sized ones here and there.  After it was all said and done I had dug up a little over 2 1/2 pounds of fresh carrots.

Not bad for a forgotten harvest!

Rearranging Hoop Houses

This weekend I planted my very first crops for spring: peas and spinach.  The weather was perfect and I had a few hours, so I raked the bed smooth and set up the trellis for the peas.  I planted one row of peas on either side of the trellis and one row of spinach along the outside edges of the bed.  Between each of the rows I laid down my irrigation drip line and tested it to make sure that it would water the bed well.  Any areas that remained dry were "fixed" by poking through the line with a thumbtack every few inches.  Once I was sure that the bed would be watered well, I mulched the whole thing in with some leaves that I had gathered in the fall.  The mulch will help to hold moisture in the soil and will feed the growing plants as it breaks down over the summer.  It will also reduce weed pressure in the beds so I won't have to spend as much time pulling weeds this year hopefully.

Since the season is still young, I have still been letting the chickens roam the garden during the day when I am home, so I needed to protect this newly planted and mulched bed from their destructive scratching and pecking.  For that I decided to cover the bed with a hoop house that would do double duty.  It would protect the bed from the chickens and keep the newly planted seeds warm and safe from high winds and the unpredictable weather of spring.  I decided to use the plastic that was covering the garlic bed to make this new hoop house since it already had a few small holes and I was going to make a couple more to get it to fit over the t-posts that held up the trellis.  I already had some rebar and pvc pipe laying around to be used for the frame of the hoop house, so all of the components of this hoop house were recycled.

The only problem that I had now was protecting the now uncovered garlic from the chickens.  The garlic didn't need protection from the weather anymore as I don't expect to have anymore really cold nights (we had been down to 10 degrees overnight a few weeks ago).  Garlic is a very hardy plant and I wanted them to start getting exposed to full sun so they can really start growing and filling in the bed.  I decided to leave the frame of the hoop house up around the bed and secure a roll of chicken wire around it to keep the chickens out.  This way the garlic can grow undisturbed and I can still let the chickens roam the garden to start eating all of the spring weeds that are coming up.  In a few more weeks I will start acclimating my broccoli to the great outdoors and will need another hoop house for them as well.  I like the flexibility of my poor man's hoop house as they are really simple to put up and take down which makes moving them really easy and convenient to use.  each hoop house probably cost me only $20-$30 and if I can keep them from getting torn up in the wind, they should last me several seasons.

Growing Chicks

It has been over two weeks since the chicks hatched and they have been growing fast.  The first feathers appeared on their wings, followed by the ones on their tails.  I am excited to see what colors these little babies turn out to be since they are my own backyard mix.  No two are exactly alike.  I think that more than half of them will be roosters which is fine since I was planning on butchering them for the freezer eventually anyway.  The hens will be added to my laying flock and will hopefully give me eggs when my older hens go to molt.  In only a few short weeks they will be going outside into my little mobile chicken tractor.  There they will be put to work keeping my yard and garden free of insect pests and weeds.  I hope to be better about moving them around this year than I was last year.  Ideally I should be moving the tractor every day to fresh fodder.  I also hope that the pasture grass and chicken treat seed that I planted last year fills in well and provides lots of fresh food for my growing flock.

Every time I raise chicks I am amazed by how quickly they grow.  They are only tiny fluff balls for a few short days before they start to feather out.  In a few more weeks, they will be fully feathered in their "teenage" phase, then they will be mini chickens for several more weeks as they grow into adulthood.  They won't be added into my laying flock until they are the same size as those chickens because I want them to be able to fend for themselves.  Chicken society can be vicious and I would rather wait until they are on equal footing as far as size goes.  Until then, I get to enjoy the baby phase for awhile longer yet

Rainy Day Project: Chicken Stock

Today is dreary outside and I have no interest in leaving the house.  One of my projects for today is to make chicken stock.  My freezer has been keeping the left overs from my chicken butchering day for the past few months and I decided to help make some room by cooking some of them in my large stock pot.

I threw a couple of frozen bags of chicken bits into the pot and covered them with water.  After setting the pot on the stove to boil I added chopped celery, carrots, onions, garlic and bay leaves.  I also added a splash of white vinegar to help pull the minerals out of the bones for a richer stock.  When I make stock I let the mix simmer all day long, but after the first couple of hours I take the bones out to remove all the extra meat scraps from them, then return the bones to the stock pot.  Those little shreds of meat will go into soup or chicken salad so nothing goes to waste.

The stock simmered all day long and before bed I ran in through a strainer to remove all the bones and mushy veggies from the rich yellow liquid.  The liquid cooled in the fridge overnight so the fat was easier to skim from the top in the morning.  The next day I returned the liquid to the stove and simmered it down to concentrate it a little more.

Once the stock was cooked down enough I got out my pressure canner and  processed it in quart jars for long term storage.  This way I don't have to take up any more space in the freezer and the stock is ready to use at a moment's notice.  This batch made about 7 jars of lovely golden stock for my pantry.

This stock is so rich and hearty, that it could be a meal by itself.  It will get used to make risotto or rice pilaf in some dishes this spring and I'm sure I will be needing to make another batch before long.

Small Spinach Harvests

The spinach that I planted last fall is growing nicely under the protection of it's hoop house.  The weather has been very cold lately and the plants are producing large, thick leaves low to the ground.  Every few days when I'm craving some greens I will trim enough leaves for a small salad, leaving the rest of the growing plant behind to produce more leaves for later.

As the weather warms, the spinach should start growing very well for a few more weeks.  Once it gets too warm it will likely begin to bolt at which point I will pull it from the bed and plant a different crop for the warm season.

Happy Garlic in the Hoophouse

The garlic that I planted last fall is really starting to take off.  I had to cover it with plastic to protect it from the chickens who have been roaming free in the garden this winter.  At first I just laid the plastic flat over the mulched garlic bed and weighed it down with heavy rocks.  Last month I had noticed that the garlic had begun to sprout and push up through the mulch layer until it was hitting the plastic.  I didn't want to stunt the garlic, so I rearranged the plastic to stretch over my pvc pipe hoops held in place by lengths of rebar pounded into the dirt.  The hoop house has acted as a nice little greenhouse for the garlic and they are very happily growing.  Some are at least 6 inches tall already and it isn't even spring yet!

I am hoping this early heavy growth means that I will be getting many good sized heads of garlic this summer.  I think I planted around 90 garlic bulbs in this three by ten foot bed so the harvest should be plenty to last me through the year.  I am nearly out of last years garlic and still have at least three months to go before I will have some fresh garlic again.  Last years harvest was on the small side because it was the first year it was planted in this type of soil.  It hadn't had time to acclimate yet.  This year I planted the largest bulbs from that crop along with bulbs of some hearty looking locally grown garlic.  From the looks of things so far, the garlic seems very happy and should grow into good sized heads in a few months.  I think I have some hardneck varieties from the locally grown bulbs, so I should also get a small harvest of fresh scapes when they send up their flowering stalk come late spring.

Garlic is such an easy crop to grow that I am surprised that more people don't grow it.  It takes up hardly any room and uses garden space in the off season since it gets planted in fall and harvested in early summer.  This makes it an ideal crop since it is out of the ground soon enough in the season, that I can use the same bed to grow a second fast growing crop in the same season.  It also requires very little moisture or protection (unless you have free ranging chickens) and is completely cold hardy and can survive temperatures well below freezing as long as they are mulched in well.  Not to mention that it adds great flavor to many different types of meals and makes great pickles and salsa.  It is very hard to go wrong with garlic.