Seedling Progress

This year I only started a handful of crops from seed indoors.  I planted the broccoli, celery and peppers near the end of January and the tomatoes went into the dirt in the middle of February.  Everything has been growing very well for me this year.  It seems to me that I always end up with healthier seedlings when I start them in three inch pots.  I don't have to waste time later transplanting them into larger pots and the plants don't get stressed because they have enough room to grow.

The broccoli have been very happy spending time outside in the sunshine and I hope to be transplanting them into the garden in just a couple more weeks.

The celery are still very small, but they are making progress steadily.  At nine weeks they still have a ways to go before they will be big enough to go outside permanently, but as the weather warms I am sure they will pick up the pace in their growth habits.  They won't be getting transplanted outside for another eight weeks or so which means they still have plenty of time to get bigger.

The peppers are coming along nicely under the warmth of the grow lights inside.  They seem like a nice healthy batch of seedlings and should be good sized in a couple more months when they get to go outside.  Peppers really like warm weather so I will make sure that they don't go outside permanently until the night temps are staying above 50.

The tomatoes are taking on a life of their own in the corner of the shelf that they occupy.  They are growing very fast and it won't be long until I will have to start putting them out in the sunshine because they will be too tall for their indoor growing set up.  I hope to keep them indoors for at least another month, but by the time the weather is warm enough for them outside, they could be huge.  I am hoping that this means that I will get a bumper crop of tomatoes from them this year.

Moving Day for the Littles

The chicks are now fully feathered out and are starting to outgrow their indoor living arrangements.  I took the heat lamp off of them a couple of weeks ago to give them some time to adjust to keeping themselves warm.  Once they go outside, they will no longer have the luxury of a temperature controlled environment so I wanted to make sure they were ready to survive the still chilly nights.

I keep the young chickens in one of my smaller chicken tractors that has a box attached to the run.  The box has some roosting bars up inside and a layer of wood shavings in the bottom for litter.  The run also has a place that they can perch when they get big enough to fly that high.  The whole run is made up of chicken wire attached to a frame.  Even the bottom has chicken wire to keep predators from digging under the frame.  I had a fox problem last year and lost some chicks.  Modifying the bottom of the run solved the problem and I no longer worry about losing chicks when I keep them in this set up.

Here the chicks will continue to grow until they are about the same size as the adult chickens.  Once they are big enough to fend for themselves they will be integrated into my laying flock if they are hens or butchered for the freezer if they are roosters.  This should happen when they are around five months old.  I plan on hatching out a second round of chicks later this year, but will have to time it so that this growing pen will be available for them when they are old enough to go out.  I probably won't set any new eggs in the incubator until June.

An Edible Perennial Garden

In the wake of rearranging the yard layout I decided to dedicate an area of the yard to edible perennials.  I decided that I would plant the area around the new location of the compost pile with a variety of perennial fruits and vegetables.  I am starting small, but I have a feeling that this might snowball on me once the ideas start rolling around in my head.

The area immediately around the compost pile now contains a trench with asparagus.  I will be able to reach the plants easily in early spring when they start to come up and then they can fade into the background as the season progresses. The next layer out is just a couple of raspberry canes.  I am hoping these will grow enough to screen the compost bin from the sides eventually.  I may add more raspberries around the bin if these first two grow well here.  Among the raspberries I would like to plant a ground cover of strawberries.  The area that I had previously planted with strawberries has not done well for the past few years so I think I need to try them in a sunnier spot.

The corner of my yard that I am dedicating to perennial plants is on the southwest side of my house.  It gets a lot of sun and is at the bottom slope in my yard.  I would like to eventually fill in that corner if I am here long enough, but the number of plants that end up here will all depend on what kind of deals I can find when adding new plants to the garden.  It is not a project that I want to invest a lot of money into because I am living in a rental.  Right now I have only spent about $30 on two raspberry plants, ten asparagus crowns and ten strawberry plants.  Hopefully these things will flourish and round out my harvests while I live here.

Other things that I might try planting in this area are jerusalem artichokes, walking onions, rhubarb, gooseberries, currants, and horseradish.  If I come across any fruit trees on sale I might pick up a couple just to add another layer to the garden too.  This yard does have a lot of potential on this sunny side of the house and I would hate to see the land just go to waste.

Hardening Off Broccoli

The Broccoli seedlings are really coming into their own.  They were planted in the middle of January and have made great progress since germinating.  Spring is just around the corner here and I was hoping to get the plants out into the garden by early to mid April.  Since they have been growing under grow lights in my kitchen they will need some time to adjust to life outside so I am gradually introducing them to the environment that will be their final home.

In the beginning I only leave them outside in a sunny area for an hour or so during the day when the weather is calm.  I will gradually increase their time outside as they get stronger and the weather warms.  They will go outside permanently once the night time temps are staying above freezing more consistently.  Broccoli can handle light freezes but I would rather not stress the young plants if I can help it.  Hopefully they will be big and sturdy by the time I get around to getting them in the dirt.

Fast Growing Chicks

It has only been three weeks since the chicks found their way out of their eggs.  Every time I hatch a batch of chicks I am always amazed by how fast they grow.  At this age their feathers are really starting to come in.  They have most of their wing feathers and the tail feathers get a little bigger every day.  They are just starting to have feathers coming in on their shoulders, but still have plenty of chick fluff covering their heads.

They are running around like crazy at this age and have begun to start perching on top of their food and water.  It won't be long until they are big enough to go outside where they can really stretch their legs and wings.

I am guessing from their behavior and sizes that I have three possible roosters (one black and two yellow) and two possible hens. I won't really know if I am right until they start crowing or laying eggs.  The roosters are destined for my freezer when they get big enough and the hens will be added to my laying flock when they are big enough to fend for themselves with the full sized chickens.  I may thin the current flock of hens to keep the numbers in a manageable range, but I am getting such a demand for eggs from my co workers that I might be able to handle a slightly larger flock if they can justify the cost of feed.

Rearranging the Yard

Now that I have lived in this same place for a couple of years I have been trying to come up with new ideas for the way my yard is arranged.  The biggest thing I want to change is the placement of the perimeter fence.  I want to keep a fence around my garden to keep the critters out, but now that the chickens have their own yard that I can keep separate from everything else it adds a new dynamic to how I use the space in my yard.  I want to keep moving the chickens around the outside of the garden area to help control weeds and bugs.  I am thinking about just taking the fence down to make moving the chicken pen easier.  Without the fence in the way it will be easier to mow the perimeter of the garden which will help control weeds a bit too.

Another thing I want to change in the yard is the location of the compost pile.  Currently it lives close to the house and near the middle of the garden.  It is a bit of an obstacle to maneuver around when I am doing things in the garden.  Moving the compost pile will clear a direct path to the garden and make working there a bit easier.  I am going to move the pile behind the house next to the shed.  There it will be close to water and still be out of the way enough that I have room to work in the area around it.  While poking around in the pile I learned that things have not broken down much the way I was composting before.  I think the pile itself was far too dry so once the pile has been turned I am going to make sure that I water it frequently to facilitate the composting process.

The yard is starting to look more organized since I have started this large undertaking.  I have removed all the large rocks that were scattered around and piled them in one place next to the shed.  I figure that if I need them I can just cart them to where I want to use them instead of tripping over them as I walk around the yard.  They are used to weigh down the edges of the hoop houses and keep drip lines in place, so I am sure they will find new homes in the garden as the season progresses.

I am also taking up all the drip line and hoses to see if I can come up with a more efficient use of my irrigation system.  The soaker hoses will be re-purposed into my new arrangement and I will reuse as many lines as possible.  The garden hoses were starting to develop multiple holes last fall, so I may not be reusing them again this year.  I may just invest in new hoses to make sure that I waste as little water as possible in this dry climate.

The garden beds are still in the process of being turned over.  I was finally able to remove the trellises from the tomato and cucumber beds so I can work in that area next.  Once the fence is moved I will likely make all the long beds the same length to make planning future crops easier.  I may even add a couple more beds to the end of the garden if I am feeling really ambitious.

Other things I want to add to the yard are more perennial crops like asparagus and different varieties of fruit.  I know this is a rental property, but I might be here for a couple more years so fast growing fruit like grapes and more strawberries would be good additions.  I have also contemplated getting a couple of plum trees, but trees are an investment that I probably won't see any return from while I am here.  Perhaps I should plant them anyway and consider them to be an future investment for someone else.

The only thing that isn't really changing is the central flower bed and herb garden that grows around the central tree in the front yard.  I did add daffodil bulbs in areas throughout the bed and look forward to their appearance in a few weeks.  I am hoping that the wildflowers have reseeded themselves but I will likely try throwing a few more varieties into the mix once the weather warms up a bit in the spring.  My goal here is to get enough perennial and vigorous annual flowers growing in the bed that they out-compete the weeds.  I also hope that the herb area comes back again like it did last year.  I think there are still a few bare spots in that corner that I will fill in here and there when spring gets closer.

Changing the Chicken Arrangement

The chickens have spent much of the winter closed in their pen which is basically a greenhouse with a nest box area attached.  On the days that I have been home they have been allowed to run around in the yard, pecking and scratching to their heart's delight.  I have had to keep a couple of garden beds under cover to protect them from the chickens, but they have happily helped till up the soil in the exposed garden beds.  They also have been spreading fertilizer around the yard during their excursions.

Now that the growing season is coming closer I want to make some changes to the way I keep my flock.  I want them to have a yard to scratch in without keeping them closed inside the coop all day.  I also want to move the coop to fresh ground since the area they stayed on all winter was pretty well tilled.  The coop is really heavy and very difficult for me to move alone, but I managed to scoot it a few inches at a time to a new area of the yard.  Around the coop I installed a line of electrified poultry netting so the chickens could run around in the area outside their coop.  This will help to protect them from predators and also contain them in the yard while giving them more area to scratch around in.  I may have to clip their wings to make sure that they stay inside the fence, but most of them seem to get the idea of staying close to the coop.  I will likely get a second roll of fencing to make their yard a little bigger in the future, but for now I will see how well just the one roll works since it is a little pricey for my budget.

When the growing season really starts I hope to start a rotational grazing system with them.  I will move the pen every time the area its on starts to look worn down.  I am hoping to plant the areas with a pasture mix eventually, so the chickens will do the soil prep for me and then move to the next area.  Maybe this year I will be able to make some progress in my battle against the weeds with the help of the chickens.