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.

Garden walk with insects

I took bumpy walk through the garden last week and found some insects in various places. Lots of chard is in this video, and ants on the fava beans at the end.

Salad season

In late September the weather was so nice and warm I thought summer would never quit. Still, I planted some seeds for the winter garden. Lettuce mainly, and snow peas. I have lots of chard and collards growing here and there already, but those leaves need to be cooked. The late fall and winter weather is the a great time for salad leaves. I forage for tender dandelion leaves, picking only the smallest and most tender (in winter the leaves are not bitter). I pick arugula and lettuces that I've planted in various spots, and pull up a daikon radish and a scallion for good measure. This year I planted red romaine lettuce for a change (I've planted various green lettuces too). The red romaine was brilliant in the sun this morning and could be part of a delicious salad this evening.