Autumn in the garden

Leaves are dropping off the trees around the yard. Cool weather and brisk winds are helping with the process. Short days make for not too much time spent outdoors, and that time can be a bit chilly.

Today I watched the chickens make their rounds to various locations in the garden. They came out this morning and I gave them walnuts from the trees in the front yard. I crack the nuts with a rock and then toss the pieces around for the chickens to pick through to find the nut meat chunks. Some of them will take pieces of nuts from my fingers. I'll hold out pieces of nuts and they'll look at me, cautiously, and some of them take me up on my offer. Those brave chickens encourage some of the others to try it out. I do the same with bits of fruit, and they'll take it right from my fingers.

Later I went out to rake leaves in the front yard. This was a body-warming exercise. The walnut trees have really started to shed lots of leaves. I rake them up into piles around a few fruit trees and into the plant border along the edge of the road. The piles of leaves act as mulch and they eventually break down and condition the soil. The leaves are free organic matter falling from the sky. What could be better? I don't have to rake them up and put them into a plastic yard waste bin to be taken off the property, and I don't have to buy soil amendments from somewhere else. It is a good use of permaculture principles. I don't worry about the allelopathic properties of the walnut leaves. The plants I have under the trees don't seem to be bothered by living within the root zone of the trees, which also have allelopathic properties.

This evening I picked a bunch of collard leaves to add to a one-pot chicken, potato, onion, and garlic dish. The collards are doing well with the cooler weather, and the chickens seem not to eat the green leaves. The chard is another story. The chickens devour chard, which is fine with me. I'd rather have the chickens eat the chard than the gophers eat it. I have some plants out of their range, so I can eat some if I want. Though tonight we'll eat collards.

Permaculture and Community

Recently I had the luck of finding out that a friendly couple down the road had an organic garden. I've been walking, cycling, and driving past their house for years and through a series of events and correspondence, found myself invited for a visit to the garden.
Community is important in Permaculture and I've struggled somewhat with that portion of my practice. So it was incredibly wonderful to get to know about the organic garden down the road, and the gardener who tends it. Her garden, like ours, is in gopher infested land. She has several raised beds with hardware cloth under them to keep the gophers from accessing her bounty. Her trellises are sturdy wire (cattle panel) supported by stakes. Her tomatoes were tall and well-supported. She waters with what appears to be a drip system. The set-up produces quite an impressive yield. I came away with my bicycle basked filled with trombetta squash, tomatoes of various sorts, and some Asian cucumbers, all grown on trellises. Sharing from the garden seems to be a fairly common trait among my gardener friends and it was great to bring organically grown vegetables home from her garden.

I brought along a container of winter pie pumpkin seeds for her to try growing next year.

When I return from Permaculture teacher training, I plan to invite her over for a visit to my non-linear permaculture jungle garden. By then the pumpkins and squash will likely have taken over most of the front and back gardens.

Tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers from a garden down the road.

Seedling Peaches

The large peach tree in the back yard has been in decline since before we moved here. I made a few years of mistakes in thinning and pruning the tree, causing it to lose a few limbs in the process. This year I thinned the fruit extensively and was able to get a good crop. We had a late rain in July, it rained all day and night, and the weight of the rain on a couple of branches was too much and there was more breakage. The tree still has several good, strong limbs though.
The peaches are delicious and I want to propagate the tree via grafting and have been growing rootstock for that purpose. I tried some bud grafting early this year. My grafting knife was brand new and extremely sharp. Fiddling with those tiny buds and trying to slice the exact shield shape off the rootstock ended up with me having two bloody thumbs and grafts that didn't take. I've decided to try cleft grafting in the next go 'round.
Meanwhile three of the peach seedling trees put on fruit this year. I've tried the fruit from each of them. One of them is completely sweet. One was a little bitter (I think the fruit might have been slightly under ripe) and one only had three fruits, two of which the birds devoured and the third fruit I picked when it had only just softened, and it was pretty tasty.
From the seedlings I'll have good peaches until I can teach myself to get a successful graft going from the old peach tree onto a seedling tree.

Seedling peach. Sweet fruit.

Chickens and the clover patch

My small back yard lawn/pasture has taken hold. It is a mix of grass and clover, with a few various weeds. It took a while for the clover and the grass to get going and I kept the chickens out of the area until it was well enough established to bounce back from their foraging. The area is a small island of green in a mostly bare spot that used to hold a big pile of dead ivy that I'd pulled from the huge amounts of ivy growing in the back yard. Once the ivy pile was truly dead, I used it as a cover for cardboard and newspaper that I used to cover other areas of ivy. The newspaper and cardboard over ivy approached worked quite well. Cutting, pulling, and digging ivy is quite a chore. And with that area bare I decided a small, green meadow/pasture/lawn type space would be nice. And it is nice.
I moved the chicken fencing to allow them access to a portion of the clover lawn/pasture. They moved in to explore and have been eating the clover and grass. I bring them treats from the garden, fallen peaches, seed spikes from salvias - which they peck and scratch at to get to the black seeds, and sometimes a tomato hornworm or a cricket. Egg production has slowed some with the onset of hotter weather.

Rooster in the clover lawn/pasture

The clover has begun flowering and attracts bees and even hummingbirds. The clover takes well to mowing and grows very quickly after. It is fixing nitrogen in a spot that seemed depleted when we got the place, and it is serving wildlife, livestock, and the humans in this system well.

Foxtail millet

In late May I planted the seeds of German Foxtail Millet I'd ordered from Owen at Annapolis Seeds in Nictaux, NS. He keeps a nice blog about things going on at his farm. I am growing the millet so that I can feed it to the chickens once it matures. I'd previously grown pearl millet, which the chickens seemed to enjoy eating right off the plants. Millet is an easy crop to grow, it does not need as much water as maize, and it requires less processing than maize for it to be fed to chickens. The dent corn I've grown and used for chicken scratch has to be put through the grain mill before the chickens can eat it. 

The plants in the foxtail millet stand in the front yard have just started to send out their foxtails, which will eventually extend out of the tops of the plants and hang like fluffy foxtails.

German Foxtail Millet

The stand of millet grows along with some pole and bush beans, which I harvest for dry beans, a few decorative flowers, some soybean plants, several squash plants (which are finally starting their march across the lawn), basil, thyme, melons, cucumbers, and a young almond tree. They all grow together. The pole beans climb the millet stalks.

Seeds forming in bursting patterns.

June First - downpour

This time of year usually finds us basking in hot, sunny weather. We're usually irrigating the garden by now, and the warm-weather plants are usually on their way. Usually. This year has been an exceptionally wet spring. Good news is that it ended a three-year drought. Our water reservoirs and snow packs are all looking very well stocked. The trouble is many of us like the hot weather for which this area is known. Some things in the garden will be delayed or diminished. My white peach tree could be counted on for ripe fruit by July 4, but this year that timeline will definitely be delayed. On the other hand, some plants in the garden prefer this weather, especially the raspberries, which have produced quite well so far, and look like they will continue. Having a diversity of plants and microclimates in the garden is important when the weather is not "normal."

June 1, 2011 downpour

Today we had a big downpour, hail mixed with rain, thunder, rainbow. Last week we had all that plus a small tornado or two touching down out in the less populated area.
All this rain means water for the garden. This has become my mantra. Still, we are looking to be outside, sitting under our big shade tree, sipping refreshing beverages, and watching the resident hummingbird work the abutilon blossoms, rather than observing from inside.

At least I know my seeds and seedlings are being watered (some of the seedlings were battered by hail but many have survived). It will be an interesting season.

Harvest

Aside from rhubarb there hasn't been much new to harvest from the garden. The usual herbs and chard are still around, and the weather has been cool for spring, so the strawberries have taken their time getting sweet. The few red ones were rather tart. Today I went and filled my basket with berries and washed, trimmed, and sliced them. Sprinkled with a little cane sugar they'll make their own light syrup and I'll put them into pint jars and freeze them. The batch of berries contains some sweet and some not so sweet, so by the time they sit in the sugar juice for a while they'll be pleasantly sweet. I did this with several quart jars last year and when I thawed the berries they had good texture, color, and flavor. I ate them just as they were. I also made a strawberry mousse for a dessert (which was much too rich for me to eat, but  my dinner companions enjoyed it).

Strawberries

The big white peach tree got a heavy thinning this past weekend (I still have one section to go) and the crop looks very promising. Another harvest on the horizon is raspberries, which I just ate off the plants last year, this year I think there will be a larger harvest to eat.

First tomato blossom

A friend gave me a few tomato plants, big sturdy things that had been grown in used paper coffee cups. I put them in the garden last weekend and noticed just today a few blossoms on one of the plants.
The plant is growing near an apple tree and its accompanying guild plants — yarrow, comfrey, fava beans, narcissus bulbs, and a few volunteer peach seedlings.

tomato flowers

Chickens - an update

White-crested, black Polish bantams.

The three chickens - two hens and a rooster - have settled into their yard and coop. They have become a family of sorts. Rooster first preferred chicken number one to chicken number two, and has since switched his preference. This seems not to change the peck order of the hens, since chicken number one will still give chicken number two a good peck on the head if needed. It just makes chicken number one a bit more independent, which I can appreciate. Chicken number two is much more compliant.

They are a family, actually. They are all siblings, but that seems to not matter to their sexual behavior. In fact I've read that it is preferable to breed a hen with her own sire. Chickens are inbred, and a little dumb from it, but with T Rex's closest living relative, we do what we can.

The eggs come, two to a day, most days. It is pretty much maintenance level for the two humans in the house. The eggs are very good quality, nice and rich yolks and  strong shells.

Through observation I have decided to alter the fencing of their yard to provide them an amount and variety of space in which they seem to keep entertained.

At one end I've started a compost pile of sorts. I chop down various overgrown things,  former plants the gophers have eaten from the bottom, and figure the chickens will either eat some of it or bugs will come and live in the pile, which the chickens will eat.

I sometimes find myself a little surprised that three chickens live in my back yard, and I even want more. Maybe 3 or four more females. I'd like to share the eggs, also keep the rooster a bit more busy.

I look forward to adding the straw/sawdust/chicken poop mix of the coop bedding to the compost pile. I believe richness of soil life will ensue. The garden will thrive on such a richness.

Still they have no other names than those assigned regarding their gender or peck order. Rooster, Chicken number one, Chicken number two.

I've worked hard to be able to pick up the females any old time I want. They come to me when I go out to their yard. The rooster is less interested, much more macho, so he rarely gets handled, unless he's being too cocky. Then I'll catch him and hold onto him, telling him he's such a nice, soft bird, before returning him to terra firma. He does not care for it, but he's kind of a chauvinist, and I'm kind of not. It could all be for naught, but I do have sympathy for the hens when he gets a little uppity.

He's not a mean rooster though. So... I'm not thinking of learning to harvest anything other than eggs just yet.

I recently read a piece in the LA Times regarding urban chickens and the writer uses the term "owning" chickens. I don't really feel like I own my chickens. I feel like a family of birds, for which I am ultimately responsible, lives in my back yard. Somehow the term ownership doesn't feel right, though I do refer to them as "my chickens."

Rainy weather and planting blueberries

The weather took a turn toward cold, wet storms, with plenty of wind. It has been going on like this for weeks. The sun is a distant memory. On days when we've had a break in the downpours and howling wind, I've been able to get a little gardening done. I've been doing some weeding, mulching, observing the progress of various plants - red currants, gooseberries, black currants, raspberries, honeyberry - all of which are doing great in this type of weather. The blueberry plants are pushing out new growth, and in a moment of splurging I ordered eight more blueberry plants, which I managed to get into the ground and mulched with pine needles.  I'm not exactly sure how many blueberry plants I had already planted before these eight, but it could be a dozen. I've been working on building up my shrub layer, and the blueberries seemed a good shrub to increase in number. The berries are delicious and I have a good source of pine needles to use for a nice acidic mulch. The plants are also attractive once they get a little mass to them.

The cold and wet weather is  likely to continue for several more days, longer perhaps, so it is a good time to plant such things.

Blueberry plant with pine needle mulch.

Spring – looking and feeling like it

Seedling peach tree in blossom.

Spring is not officially here until March 20, and the weather has been cold, wet, windy, and it even snowed for one minute within the last two weeks. Snow is a once every ten years event in these parts. I slept through the whole thing since it happened very early in the morning. I was around for the hail later that day though. Various weather reports foretold doom to fruit trees when the night time low temperatures were supposed to drop below freezing for several hours.

Today looks and feels like spring though. It is sunny and warm, with a light breeze. The bees are out working all the blossoms in the yard - nanking cherry, apricot, peach, rosemary, calendula, and more. The hellebore is in full bloom, right on time, and a few other perennials are starting to push through.  A few of the seedling peach trees I've grown are flowering this year, and if they make fruit this year I'll be able to determine if they are worth keeping as they are or if I should make a graft and let the scion be the dominant tree part. I have two good fruiting peaches (a yellow peach and a white peach) and have a friend who has collected scion from his peach tree, so I can still have multiple peaches on one good peach stock. I'll be practicing my grafting skills soon.

Today one of the two hummingbirds fledged, and the other one is still in its nest, working on perching technique, building up wing strength with various exercise sessions, and preening. The first to fledge has been flitting around in the mulberry tree while the mother bird chases away various interlopers (scrub jays mostly), and comes back to feed both her offspring. I did not take lots of photos with this set of birds, since they look just like the birds I photographed heavily last summer. It was frequently very cold during their incubation and subsequent rearing that I feared they would not make it, but the mother bird really worked on insulating the nest, and the birds made it. I'm hoping to watch the one still in the nest take its first flight.

Hummingbird yet to leave the nest.

Nanking cherry in flower

First break of dormancy on the lemon verbena shrub (I was worried it wouldn't survive the cold weather)

Chicken out on the pasture.
Both hens are now consistently laying their eggs in the nest box.

Chicken food

Chickens eating walnuts.

These chickens have well adapted to their new, larger range. I've made a very large yard for them to use for foraging and whatnot. I bought a few rolls of black plastic fencing, which is very light weight and easy to maneuver. Their area now includes a space underneath  some small trees that had collected lots of leaf litter for them to dig into. They can also dig around under some shrubs and young olive trees. Since these chickens are not particularly large, they don't seem to do too much damage to the trees. In fact, they are keeping the grass down around the trees, and foiling any pest build up. On occasion I'll let them out of that area and they inevitably head over toward the house and the granite patio. I'll let them hang out around the house for awhile and then lure them back to their own fenced area by cracking walnuts with brick. They know what the sound of walnut shells breaking sounds like, and they make haste to get to the spot where I crack the nuts. They love to eat walnuts, and do so with a real fervor.
Walnuts have lots of that healthy, omega 3 fat in them, so I'm thinking that will make the eggs omega eggs.

The eggs are coming two days on and one day off, from chicken number 1 at this point. Chicken number 2 looks like she's getting ready to start laying (her bottom is starting to get larger).

I am enjoying the chickens much more, now that we have grown more accustomed to each other, and I love that the hen eats bugs and walnuts and other things I don't like to eat, and then makes eggs out of them. The rooster has grown into a beautiful, bird, glossy black feathers shine green in the light. His ruff and tail feathers are fantastic.

I can see how important it is to have animals in a Permaculture situation, they offer so much as labor and as food. They keep weeds down, create food with their eggs, and break pest cycles. They also make fertilizer for the garden. The coop litter (straw and wood shavings) will mix with all their crap and become a wonderful addition to a compost pile.

A Sunny January Day

Today the weather report said sun and temps of 75 F.
It was a lovely day to spend in the garden. I let the chickens have the run of the whole yard. They like to hang out on the decomposed granite patio and also to dig in the Mulberry leaves, which cover the mostly ornamental beds nearby. The hen that is laying is very focused on finding bugs to eat. She scratches at the leaves and then snaps up any bugs she sees. The rooster and the other hen do the same, but with less focus.
While they were visiting various places in the yard I spent some time collecting scion wood from the white peach and the Moorpark apricot. I'm going to work on grafting in the spring and want to have some dormant wood to work with. I'll try grafting them both on various peach seedlings I have growing in a few places. I also took some black currant cuttings and stuck them in the ground.
Around 2 p.m. the hen which lays went into the coop and settled into her little dent in the straw, and went about laying an egg. I watched her from the window for a while and she seemed to not be making progress. Then the rooster and the other hen came in, and he stood right by her and the other hen took a little nap nearby. All this went on for some time, so I left and waited, until I saw them come out of the coop, to go get the egg. It was still warm when I picked it up. I now have half a dozen peewee eggs in the fridge. This is a collection from the past week or so.
The peewee eggs translate to large eggs with four peewees being the same as 3 three large. Last weekend I used four peewee eggs to make a batch of fresh pasta that I then used to make ravioli. The yolks were such a deep yellow that the sheets of pasta were a brilliant yellow when the sun shone through them.
Chances are good I'll repeat the procedure. The raviolis were delicious. Fresh made pasta is a wonderful food.

Hydrologic cycle & three more eggs

Sunset Jan 2011.

We visited the Pacific Ocean for five, mostly-sunny days. Every day we walked on the beach, a little further each day. On our last full day there we walked seven miles on the beach, in bare feet. The water was cold and the sand was cold, but there was enough sun to keep us warm, so long as we kept moving. Many days of rain preceded our visit, and some areas to the north and the south of where we stayed were experiencing landslides and broken sewage pipes leaking into the ocean. I wanted to visit Moonstone Beach State Park near Cambria, but that beach was considered too toxic from a sewage leak and other toxins in the water system, and was closed. Knowing that our water will make its way to a creek, river, lake, or ocean, should  keep us keenly aware of what we put into it as "waste." In April of 2010 Time magazine did a piece about various pharmaceuticals making their way into water supplies. The hydrologic cycle is a local and global concern. It sure is beautiful to look at too.

Three eggs, in the carton now, with the pointy end down.

When we returned I found three more eggs deposited in the chicken coop. They were on the floor in a corner, not in the nest boxes, so I've put two fake eggs into a nest box to help encourage the chickens to lay in there. I'm not sure if the chickens will get it, since the eggs are purple and green. They are musical shaker eggs but they were the only "fake" egg-shaped thing we had around just now.

After consulting a chicken book I weighed the eggs and found that they weigh 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 ounces each. The formula for figuring out their weight is to multiply the weight of one egg by twelve to get the carton weight. These eggs rate as "peewee" sized eggs. The book also says the eggs should get a bit larger in the coming weeks, so I'll weigh future eggs to check on that assumption. Every chicken book I consulted said that chickens would not lay with less than 14 hours of daylight (which is one reason why many people put lights in their chicken coops). I have no artificial light in the coop, so I'm still not sure what the scoop is with that idea. We are only getting about 9 hours 45 minutes.

First Egg

Well, there it is. 

What a surprise to find a little white egg in the chicken coop, this second day of January.

The books I've read said the chickens wouldn't lay with less than 14 hours of sunlight, so I didn't expect any eggs until spring.

I admit it was exciting to find the egg.

First egg interior. A very deep yellow yolk, which is held high in the white.

The first egg yolk (top) is much deeper yellow and the white is much firmer than the commercial egg (bottom). These two eggs were put into a batter for banana bread.  

Chickens are growing

Chicken number two

Rooster

The three chickens are getting used to things around here. They arrived one hot day in the summer. Now that we've had rain, frost, and a few good north winds with downpours, they're no longer running into their coop with the slightest bit of rain or wind. They generally spend most of the day outside, foraging for plants, bugs, worms, and seeds. They do get particularly excited about worms, so if I find one that is waterlogged on the pavement, I'll take it back to the birds where they pick it up and carry it around, keeping it from one another.

Last week they had a visit from a small hawk. I heard the hens making an uproar and looked out to see them in a flap with a small hawk. The hens fought the small bird off, sending it to a nearby branch, and when I went out to check on the birds the hawk flew off. Assessing the scene I noted the rooster napping nearby while the hens were in rather a froth about the fight. I felt a tinge of pride in those two hens. They all went into the coop for a while, and then came out again a bit later.

The rooster is working on getting his crow just right. He's not singing his song regularly, but more frequently now. Some days his tone is a little better than others. I think with practice he'll have a nice bel canto crow with which to express himself. His black feathers have a lovely greenish sheen in the light and he's learning to share!

The hens have established their peck order and it was heavily enforced for weeks, and now they've seemed to relax about it a bit.

One unexpected delight for me is the sound they make when they drink water. They dip their beaks into the container of water, then tilt back their heads and make a gentle tapping sound while they swallow the water. It is such a simple act, taking a drink of water, but I love watching and listening to them while they do it.

One recent weekend day I let them have free run of the entire back yard. Anywhere they wanted to go I'd let them. I was working out in the garden most of the day and they made their way to points previously not visited. They roamed around—a little cluster of black and white—and explored their larger world. They generally have about 100 ft of fence to explore, but that day they roamed near the apple trees, across the small lawn, and a bit into the main food garden. When they got back to their familiar rosemary bush in the afternoon, I started closing up the fencing so they'd be sure to find their way back into their coop when the time came.

I find it very beneficial to have the birds as part of the garden. I do not feel sentimental about them as pets (though I'm warned that may come) but I do like having them as workers in the garden. Like our cat makes our house feel warmer and comfortable to us, the chickens make the garden feel more alive to me. They are fertilizing and eating bugs, and creating movement out there. I can usually see them from my desk, and when I feel like taking a break, I'll head out to watch them for a while.

Cold Weather

Lemons

We've got a frost alert for the next few nights. This means various tender plants need to be protected from the cold, mostly citrus. This evening I went about covering and insulating my two lime plants and two lemon plants. I also picked most of the lemons from the lemon tree that bears fruit. Last year the fruit froze and fell off in a cold snap. This year I was looking forward to harvesting lemons on an as-needed basis. Now I have a basket full of lemons that will need some sort of processing. I could juice them and freeze the juice or I could make lemon marmalade. I love the idea of doing some of each.

I started making some green tomato jam yesterday, and it is resting before I'll cook it up some more and then process it in half-pint jars. Since water bath canning is so energy intensive I could do a batch of marmalade and process them all on the same day.

Thanksgiving day in the USA is on Thursday, November 25 this year, and I'm thinking I'll make a pumpkin pie using one of the pie pumpkins I grew this year. I'm going to brine two organic chickens on Wednesday and then on Thursday I'll roast them in the oven. One will be stuffed with tomato and feta from my Greek cookbook, and the other will be unstuffed.  We'll have mashed potatoes with lots of butter, perhaps some pan gravy, collards from the garden (which will be nice and mellow from the frost) and perhaps a few other things. I enjoy cooking with things that I've grown. The pie pumpkin and collards in this case. A few weeks ago I made some pumpkin cannelloni with one of the French heirloom pumpkins I roasted and some tomato sauce I made in September, and had in the freezer.

Fall Gardening

The temperatures were in the 80s this weekend, a little warm for the chickens so I put the mister on to cool down their yard, but not too hot for me to move a pile of old ivy and sticks. This pile was created  out of branches and pieces of cut ivy. I piled and piled and finally I decided the pile wasn't doing much but making a comfortable home for a few mice. We get such little rain here that it would take so very long for that pile to break down. I had tried planting squash to grow upon it, but the rodents chewed through the squash plants, killing them.


Old ivy on top of new...

I've been saving up cardboard boxes and flattening them for use as ivy suppressors. There is still so much ivy, even though a huge pile has been pulled out. I've put down cardboard in a large area, spreading out a little at a time. I finally had a critical mass of cardboard and laid it down on top of the ivy, then I took the pieces of the pile—sticks and dried out ivy mostly—and spread that on top of the cardboard. Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia says that a forest grows on a fallen forest and so my food forest will have plenty of organic matter to build upon and grow into.

With the pile gone, there is a rather large space, maybe 30ft by 30ft (I've yet to measure it), that is ready for a garden. I am thinking about making a small lawn in the middle, upon which to lounge, and then make the edges into a chicken-friendly pasture. At the back end of the space is a very old almond tree and some old lilacs, at the base of which I am thinking of planting lavender, keeping it pretty drought-friendly. Beyond those trees is the chicken house and yards, with a small foot path connecting the spaces.

At one edge is a group of trees that has been acquired as scaffolding for a large grape vine. The wild birds love to come and eat the grapes when they ripen, creating a cacophony of bird song and various bird arguments. At the parallel edge is an island of ivy with a mature cypress tree and some old fence posts covered in ivy that haven't been taken down yet. Still lots of ivy remains. And at the other end, is the entrance from the decomposed granite patio, where much outdoor time is spent, and also a male American Persimmon which had been coppiced many years ago and how has several long trunks. The grape has made its way from another almond, which resides next to the fruitless Persimmon, into the Persimmon. Once the pasture is installed, it should feel like a nice meadow in a ring of various trees. It will require summer irrigation and I am looking at tall fescue for the more refined lawn area, as it has lower water requirements than many grasses. Plants suitable for chicken forage will go in the rougher area.

I was somewhat surprised at my desire for a small lawn in the backyard. I've been spending time and energy removing the lawn in the front yard and replacing it with various useful plants. We've lounged around on the remaining front lawn in the summer, and it is rather pleasant, save for all the dog walkers and other people who can tend to take a look at whatever we're doing. Our street also gets some maniac drivers who roar down the 25 mph street at 45 mph, or even faster. That makes our little cat nervous, and us nervous about our cat. The shrubs will grow up taller in a few years, but I am not interested in having an audience when I'm hanging out in my gardening clothes and having a refreshing beverage. So I feel that a small lawn/pasture area will make a nice lounging setting that is more private, and have a more pleasant feel for the people and the cat. It will also provide a nice forage area for the chickens.

. . . 

Nicotiana tabacum 'Havana'

This year I grew some tobacco plants, just to see what the plants looked like. Tobacco has a long history with humankind and I am interested in plants that people have found or do find useful. The plants made very large, sticky leaves, which smelled of tobacco, and they bloomed with these long pink flowers at the tops of 3-4 ft plants (in partial shade). They are the prettiest plants in the garden bed they're in, and they brighten up our fall evenings.

Berm & Basin and other things in early Fall

The weather is starting to feel more autumnal, leaves are dropping, the air is cooler, wind has kicked up, we have even had some rain. The walnut trees are dropping leaves in the front yard, and the berm/basin area is a great collector of the leaves. The leaves gather at the edge of the road and the planting area, and they also fall in from above. I'll rake them off the grass and put them in there too, or use them in mulch piles around the pomegranate and peach in the front yard. The bamboo is sending up several new culms, so we'll have a good clump soon enough.

Berm and Basin progress.

The sole surviving pie pumpkin plant made two nice pumpkins, which have been curing in the sun. The other pumpkin I planted is a Cinderella's carriage type, which has more pronounced ribs and is flatter than these winter luxury pie pumpkins. The Cinderella pumpkin is a French heirloom type and is apparently good for pie also. More of the Cinderella plants survived the gopher attacks and so I have many of those pumpkins to try this year.

Pie pumpkins curing in the sun.

The chickens are adjusting to their environment. The male bolts through the chicken door when I open it in the morning, and the females follow a little timidly. I've made a temporary fenced area that connects to their more secure fenced area and I open their gate to let them out into a larger and grassier area. They scratch and eat grass, which seems to be their favorite food, and then when the early evening comes they all go back into their house. The male has consistently been roosting now and the females still want to be in the nest boxes, so I move them onto the roosts when it gets dark. One night this week they all three went on the roosts of their own accord, so perhaps they are starting to get the idea. It is hard to know what goes on in the tiny bird brains.

Male chicken.

Hot weather in early fall

We've been having a bit of a heat wave here, with temperatures in the high 90s and even cresting 100. My chicken books say that hot temperatures can be deadly for  chickens, so I've hooked up a fine mist sprinkler to spray over one part of their outdoor pen to cool the air down. I've been refreshing their water several times a day to keep it cool, and they seem to be doing fine. The male will even stand under the mist, while the females tend to avoid it.

In early September we had cooler weather and so I started thinking about taking fall cuttings of some plants I want to propagate. I took some lavender cuttings back then and put them in a shaded spot, close to my office door so that I would be sure to pay them the care they need – frequent watering mostly. Now I am not sure if they are going to make it with all this heat, but it'll be a good experiment. And if any of them do make it, all the better.

The berm in the front yard is looking pretty good, considering I don't water it much and that most of the plants are from re-seeding. There is a lush growth of new calendula, daikon, and fava beans. The pineapple guavas look pretty good and one of them even has a few fruits. In place of the ginkgo tree that the gopher killed I've planted a lime tree. The poor thing had a crowded root system so I pruned the roots and the top very heavily before planting it, I mulched it very well, and now it is sending out new growth, while in amongst the flush of calendula, etc. A few strawberry plants I moved out there in the spring have taken hold and are sending out runners. Strawberries make such a nice groundcover, and the fruits are pretty good too. The sunflowers have finished their show and are now ghosts towering over the other plants, as are the hollyhocks, their long stalks covered in seed pods and the odd flower.

The bamboo served as a great support for the pole beans, and it has started to push up some new growth.

Alphonse Karr bamboo with pole beans.

Detail of beans on bamboo.