Transplanting Broccoli

The winds have died down and the weather is warming quickly so it seems like a good time to transplant the first of my early started seedlings.  The broccoli has developed strong roots and has gotten big enough to hold it's own in our fickle Colorado weather.  It was time to move it to it's permanent home in the garden.

The bed it was going into was turned over last fall and mixed with a healthy dose of leaves that composted over the winter.  The soil was still soft and crumbly in this bed so I only had to level it with a rake and set up the drip lines and the bed was ready to be planted.

The first thing I did was figure out the layout that I wanted for this bed.  Broccoli can get quite large when it is happy so I try to give the plants enough room to grow.  Ideally the spacing would have been closer to 18 inches between plants, but I staggered them so they would fill in the bed when they are fully grown.  They are a little over 12 inches apart in this layout.

When they went into the dirt I spread them a little wider where I could and I think they will do well in this bed.  The gaps between each plant were filled with a few fast growing crops of beets and turnips.  I am hoping that I can harvest these things in just a couple of months before the broccoli takes over the bed.  While they are growing they will be a bit of a ground cover to help control weeds in the beds.  I also planted a handful of carrot seeds in the gaps of the middle row.  The carrots will probably be a crop that I harvest much later in the season, probably after the broccoli is done for the year.  I like to plant carrots throughout the garden where I can since they don't have to be harvested at any particular time.  They store in the dirt quite well and they generally get sweeter after a frost which makes for a nice treat in the fall.

Cover Crops and No Till

This year in the garden I want to try a more regenerative approach to my gardening practices.  I know that my soil is in pretty bad shape and very compacted so I want to do what I can to improve it.  I have added compost and mulch to the beds in the last couple of years and that has helped some, but I know that I can do better.   I have been watching videos about soil ecology posted by Living Web Farms on You Tube.  There is a wealth of information there and I have only scratched the surface, but with my background in biology and ecology I am eager to learn more.

In my garden I have mixed crops together in beds, but I have never really done any cover cropping.  I always figured that my small garden beds wouldn't work the same way as a large farm field.  This year I want to try growing cover crops if only because they will hopefully lower my work load as far as mulching, watering and weeding goes.  The information that I have been learning about recommends a 50/50 mix of legumes and grasses for cover cropping with greater diversity being better overall for improving soil health.  The particular species to use depends on what you are wanting to do to improve the soil and what season you are planting for (there are different cover crops for warm or cold seasons).

I am going to start small in my garden with my limited budget so I purchased some buckwheat and hulless oats.  I also have a peas, radishes and turnips that I want to try adding to the mix.  I want to break up the hard soil with the root crops, use the peas to add nitrogen to the soil, use the oats to add carbon, and the buckwheat to attract pollinators.  I am still thinking about how I want to incorporate this type of cover cropping to my small garden, but I am leaning towards using this mix in a couple test beds to see what happens.  I may have to rethink my planting plans for each of my beds to make sure that I have enough room for everything that I want to grow.

I also want to plant this type of mix in the paths between my garden beds to act as a buffer zone around each bed.  I don't want weeds to grow there, but bare earth isn't good either.  Last year I mulched the paths heavily which worked well, but I want to try a living mulch this year.  If things are going to grow anyway, I might as well make sure that what ever is growing is useful.  In my case all of those cover crops can double as food for my small flock of chickens.  I often throw them all the weeds that I pull in the summer anyway, so giving them nutritious filler instead is a win win.

Things are going to get messy this year, but that is one of my favorite things about gardening.  There is so much to learn. Each year is a chance to try out new ideas and hopefully make changes that grow into something better than what was there before.  This year will be the year of the cover crop for my garden.

Setting Up Some Irrigation

Planting season is fast approaching here though the weather seems to be a bit indecisive right now.  We keep alternating between nice days in the 60's and 70's and blustery days that barely clear 45.  Night time frosts are becoming fewer and fewer, though we did have a night in the low 20's just this week.  The wind has been another issue.  We have been hit with windstorm after windstorm for the past few weeks, so even though the temps have been suitable for cold weather crops like broccoli, I haven't planted them out yet because I don't want them to get beat up from all the flying debris coming through the yard.  The high winds make working outdoors unpleasant to say the least.  It makes watering harder, digging too dusty, and planting tiny seeds impossible.  I finally had a break in the weather that coincided with my day off so I took advantage of the opportunity to start laying out my drip irrigation.

This year I am trying to revamp my system now that I have a better idea of the layout that I want for my yard.  I have a hose that reaches to the far side of the middle of my yard.  At the end of the hose I have a series of hose splitters that direct water to different sections of my garden.  The line that I focused on today was the section of long garden beds that will hold my tall growing warm weather crops.  I am trying to standardize having three drip lines per bed and I also am making sure that each drip line lines up with the edges of the bed better than the way I had them set up before.  I don't want to be watering weeds at the ends of my beds if I can help it.  For this section I recycled the lines that I used in these beds last year.  Most of the drip lines didn't drip consistently so I took the time to poke holes in them every couple inches with a thumb tack which was a tedious chore.  I have found that doing this works well to revitalize clogged lines and saves me from having to buy fresh lines every year.  Last year I didn't have three lines in each bed so I will be adding a couple new ones as I go along.

So far I only have lines plugged in to the beds that I have planted already.  I don't want to start watering empty beds because that will just give any weeds in the beds a head start.  The first two beds I have planted with corn.  I try to get corn in early so that it can get established before I add the companion crop of squash when the weather gets warmer.  It may have to tolerate a few cold nights after it germinates but the weather forecast doesn't call for any nights below freezing for the next few weeks so I hope it will be in the clear.  If worst comes to worst I can always throw a sheet of plastic over the bed for some protection.  The next bed that irrigation was set up on was the potato bed.  I have been hand watering this bed and others for the past few weeks, so this should make things a little easier for me.  The last area that I irrigated off this line was my perennial bed by the compost pile.  This will guarantee that these plants are watered every time I water the garden which further simplifies the work I will be doing in the garden this summer.

The next section of irrigation that I worked on was the section of short beds that made up the original footprint of the garden.  This section got a brand new main line that was custom fit to the length of the garden on this side.  My goal this year is to have fewer lines to trip over as I work my way around the garden, so I made sure that there are no hoses running down the central path in the garden.  Maybe this year I will be able to get a lawn mower in there to help control the weeds too.  Each of these beds will also be standardized to three lines each.  I think that having three lines in each bed gives good coverage with watering and makes it easy to plan where to plant things.  In this section I focused on getting irrigation on the beds that were already planted: garlic, onions, peas/carrots, and lettuce/spinach/turnips.  I will add more lines as the crops go into the ground and in a few more weeks the garden should be completely irrigated.

I have one hose that I will be using to move around the yard to water the different sections of grass as I plant them and I plan on getting one more hose splitter so that I can set up irrigation for my flower bed.  My goal is to make watering my yard as easy as possible with as little water waste as I can manage.  Drip irrigation is nice because I can water the base of my plants right where they need it without worrying about the water getting on the leaves of the plants or blowing the wrong way and evaporating off before the plants can use it.  The drip line that I am using can be on top of the soil, or I can cover it with mulch and it will still water my garden just fine.  As dry as it is here in this high desert every drop counts.  I have to pay for my water so I want to use as little as possible, yet still have a productive garden.  I will mulch beds where I can to help conserve water even more and help extend the length of time between watering.

Keeping Busy Making Hats

The last couple of days have been a windstorm outside which makes getting outdoor projects done very difficult.  I opted instead to spend the days inside relaxing in my chair making hats.  I am proud to say that I was able to finish these three hats in just two days.

All of these hats are made from yarn that I had left over from previous projects.  This is one way that I can increase my inventory while I decrease the size of my yarn stash.  I would rather have a hat stash than a yarn stash anyway.  All of these hats are very warm and thick and I am hoping to find buyers for them at the local shops in town.  I still have many more partial skeins of yarn in my stash, so I will keep trying to work my way through them when I can find the time.  It is fun to try different color combinations working with what I have on hand. Hopefully by fall I will have plenty of new hats to round out my inventory.  I don't think that there will be much more indoor down time in the coming months, but I will try to take advantage of days like this when I can.

Chicken Escape

Things have been working pretty well with the new fencing arrangement for the chickens.  Most of them seem happy to stay inside the fenced off area close to their coop.  However there are a couple that have made several attempts to escape the fenced area to spend the day in the yard and garden.  The first couple times I caught one of them outside the fence I trimmed back the flight feathers on one wing.  That seemed to keep things good for a little while.  Then one day I came home after work to two escaped hens and the rooster on my front steps.  I was not happy.  They had spent the day scratching up several of my newly planted beds and had removed the new mulch that I had just spread around my raspberry plants.

I decided that was my cue to move them on to fresh ground with their pen because apparently they were bored of where they were.  I took the morning to slowly scoot the coop to it's new position in the yard.  The pen was then moved to cover the other half of the front of the yard.  I am moving the pen incrementally around the yard in hopes that I will be able to plant a pasture mix in the areas that have already been tilled up by the chickens.  In this position they will be sharing the pen with the chicken tractor that is currently housing the littles.  I am hoping that this arrangement will make them more tolerant of the young chickens when they finally get integrated into the rest of the flock.  When I moved the fencing I made sure to make the fence lines nice and tight so there were no low spots that would be easy to fly over.  I also tied some of the fence poles to stakes to help them keep a tight and tall fence line.  So far it seems to be working.  I just hope that it will still work once the chickens get bored of this new area.

A Hat For A Gift

Even though spring has arrived I am still getting requests for crocheted crafts.  The most recent project was a hat that will become a gift.  The request was for a soft hat made with dark royal blue and burgundy colors.  I found the perfect colors, but the yarn that I chose made the project a little more involved that I had anticipated.  The yarn was a soft, thick four ply yarn and when I made my first attempt using the whole thickness of the yarn I learned that I had made a mistake.  I didn't have any crochet hooks large enough to use with two strands of this yarn at the same time.  My solution was to un-ply the yarns and use one strand of each color to make the hat.  Un-plying the yarns became an exercise in patience and I only did a little at a time to keep the single strands from becoming too tangled.  The result was well worth the trouble.  The hat is super soft and still thick and warm and the colors worked really well together.  I really love the end product and I hope the receiver of this gift loves it too.

One More For The Freezer

Raising chickens has been an interesting learning experience.  When I got chickens I had intended on using them for eggs and meat.  Harvesting eggs is easy and fun.  Harvesting meat is my least favorite job in the world, but a necessary evil if I want to eat my chickens.  Taking a life is never an uplifting experience so I try to be as calm and respectful as I can.  My hands shake every time.

I have learned that I prefer to do my butchering at dusk, not long after the chickens have put themselves to bed for the night.  They are easier to catch and handle in the low light and seem much less stressed at this time of day.  On my planned butchering day I will start heating the water in the scalding pot about an hour before dusk.  While that is heating I set up my butchering station outside which consists of a killing cone with a bucket below it to catch the mess.  I also take the time to sharpen my knife (this makes a fast, clean kill more likely).  Once the water has reached 160 degrees it is time to harvest the chicken.

Once I get the gruesome part over with, I move on to the next step - scalding and plucking.  I usually keep a bag on hand to catch all the feathers and extraneous bits like the head and feet.  I just dunk the chicken into the scalding water for a few minutes and swish it around to make sure the hot water soaks through to the base of the feathers and loosens them.  Then a small mess ensues and I am left with a bald chicken that looks a lot like what you get from a grocery store.  The only difference that I have noticed is that my home grown chickens are much larger and have sturdier bone structure than the franken-chickens that come from the store.  The legs are much closer to the size of turkey legs in my opinion, but that is probably because they come from a dual purpose breed that has had time to grow to full size.

I generally part my chickens out before I freeze them and I save the carcass and some of the organ meats for making stock later.  From one chicken I can get eight to ten meals for myself if I include the stock and meat scraps that I glean from the cooked carcass.  These dual purpose chickens can weigh upwards of ten pounds when they are fully grown which is considerably larger than the chickens that can be bought at the local grocery store.  Most of the difference in weight would be due to the heavier bone structure in a dual purpose breed, but they still provide plenty of meat and are well worth the effort of growing them out slowly over a longer time period in my opinion.  Not to mention that the flavor of homegrown chicken is so much better than the store-bought variety.

Starting Some Cool Weather Crops

April is a kind of limbo in the garden.  The weather isn't quite warm enough to chance planting out the heat loving crops, but day time temps are good for starting some cool weather crops.  The weeds haven't really starting being a problem yet and the garden is starting to look neat and organized.  The seeds that I try to plant this time of year are lettuce, peas, spinach, turnips, and carrots. These are things that will germinate despite the still chilly night time temps and can tolerate a few light frosts.
Smaller, faster growing crops like lettuce, spinach and turnips share a bed.  The peas and carrots also share a bed.  The idea is to plant another rotation of crops in these beds this summer when the spring crops have finished.  Some time in mid summer I will start another round of cold tolerant plants like cabbage and broccoli.  These will hopefully be ready to harvest by late fall.

As far as varieties go, I try to choose things that do well in my climate and soil type.   This round of carrots are Scarlet Nantes which have a stout growth habit and can help break up my hard clay soils.  I planted Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach because it will be slow to bolt in the early heat of summer.  The varieties of lettuce I grow are also heat tolerant and slow to bolt.  This round included a red curly leaf variety called sunset, a green curly leaf variety called Gentilina, and an oakleaf variety called Bronze Arrow.  The peas I planted this year are De Grace Snow peas which are a dwarf variety that produces quickly and doesn't need trellising.  I planted them in a block on half of the bed so they can support each other as they grow.

This year these cool weather crops were planted in beds that do get some shade from the resident pine tree.  When the season heats up I am hoping that the shaded areas will help extend the season for these veggies, giving me a longer harvesting period to enjoy.  I am looking forward to increasing the variety of foods coming from my backyard in the coming months.  Soon the garden will be bursting with life again.

Onions In the Ground

Early spring is the time of the year when gardening slowly begins to take off.  I like to plant early season crops as soon as I can to give them plenty of time to grow before the weather gets too hot for them.  Overwintered crops like spinach and garlic are the first to make an appearance and they are the cue for me to start getting other things in the dirt like my onions.

The weather was looking like we were going to have a string of nice days for a little while so I took the opportunity to plant my onions.  I am still devoting two small beds to onions this year - one is planted in sets and the other is planted with seeds.  This is the first year that I am trying to direct seed some of my onions into the bed in an attempt to save time transplanting onion starts later.  I usually have pretty good luck planting sets, but I don't think they keep as well, so I want to be able to compare onions started from seeds to onions started from sets.  A friend of mine said that she had great success direct seeding her onions in the spring, so I am hoping that I will too.

The bed that I planted with seeds is half yellow onions and half red onions.  The bed planted with sets is about half yellow onions, a quarter red onions and a quarter shallots.  The shallots were the biggest roundest shallots that I had left over from last year's harvest and I saved them for the sole purpose of replanting them this spring.  I don't eat a ton of shallots, but I do like them so I decided that they could have some space in my garden again this year.

When I plant sets I space them about three to four inches apart.  Onions don't have a big root system and planting them close together gives them a better chance of out-competing any weeds that pop up in their bed.  I give shallots a little more space so they can spread out a little more.  I try to plant them with an eight inch spacing.  Planting onions seeds is a little harder and I probably have one to two inch spacing in that bed.  If they need thinning, then I will just harvest them as green onions early in the season to allow others the space they need to grow big.

Completing a Large Project : A Baby Blanket

Several months ago I learned that a good friend of mine was going to be having her first child.  I love to crochet and I have made a point of making personalized baby blankets for several of my friends so I wanted to make something special for her too.  When she first found out that she was expecting she was thinking that they were going to keep the baby's sex a secret so I decided on using gender neutral colors.  Pastel yellow and green stripes make up the main body of the blanket.  In the course of making the blanket I learned that the baby will be a boy, so I decided to use a pastel blue yarn to make the border on the blanket.  I used a waffle stitch to give the blanket some interesting texture.  The border is a variety of a ripple stitch which adds a little more dimension to the blanket.  In making the blanket I learned that the waffle stitch makes a nice thick, warm blanket that will surely keep the baby warm in the cooler parts of the year.  I try to make my baby blankets fairly large so that the child can keep using it as they grow.  As is it, the blanket comfortably covers my lap, so hopefully it will become a keepsake that will be used for years to come.

Planting Potatoes

The beginning of April has been pretty nice this year.  The weather has been cooperative enough that I have been able to make progress on turning over more garden beds.  The beds that I have prioritized are ones that will be getting some of my earlier crops into the ground.  Today that crop was potatoes.

I used my hoe to make two trenches in this bed.  I had such a surplus of potatoes that I didn't eat from last year that I decided that I don't need to plant as many as I did last year.  Some of those uneaten potatoes are going into the dirt to grow more potatoes for me this year. Yay for another year of free potatoes!

They had been stored in boxes in my closet over the winter and it was warm enough that they started to grow sprouts a couple of months ago.  Most of the seed potatoes at the store barely have eyes right now, so it looks like my potatoes are already off to a head start for the year.

When I planted them I laid them down in the trench and covered them with a layer of leaves and dirt.  I added the leaves now because I want them to add organic matter to the soil, but I didn't have time to work them in months ahead of time so they could break down.  Over the growing season they should break down just fine and help to nourish the potato plants that will occupy this space.