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.

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.

Remnants

Temperatures are starting to drop into the low 30s at night.
I found a few green tomatoes, hanging on to withered plants, and glowing in the sun.