Awaiting the festivities.
Empty classrooms– (wasn’t it only yesterday they were seeds?)
The graduating class lines up–
—
The procession (“Pomp and Circumstance”)–
Entering the workforce—
Wishing you happy moments waking up your gardens!
Chicken Tunnels!!
I find something to post about nearly every day now, as spring is springing!
In my ongoing search for a way to combine suburban life and with chickens, I stumbled on Chicken Tunnels – chicken tunnels are hot!! Everyone’s posting about Chicken Tunnels! Or maybe that was last year, and I’m behind the curve. Here is a photo from Backyard Farming Connection.com last spring–
Backyard Farming Connection – read more about their operation here: http://www.backyardfarmingconnection.com/2014/05/garden-update-chicken-tunnels.html
But my favorite source on this subject was the Chicken Tunnel Man, Bruce Morgan’s YouTube VIDEO. Bruce directs his “chooks” into one garden bed at a time via portable wire tunnels that he stores on top of his shed – a very inspirational guy from Down Under. https://youtu.be/GlyV8fA6R_Q
So far I haven’t built any chicken tunnels – but I ‘ve been thinking about something like them for a long time. I first heard about chicken tunnels when someone sent me photos last month. But I suspect for now paddocks are still the easiest for us on this cozy suburban 1/2 acre, since you rotate the chickens simply by closing one door and opening another, and have no tunnels to store.
Lately we are bringing all our piles of weed to the chickens in their run, as we try to get our gardens planted and can’t risk an escapee scratching her way through the baby plants. I have a lot of garden beds to secure. Dealing with wire is NOT my favorite job either.
It’s tempting though – if I can think of a way to store all that tunnel when not in use…
Flowers for Chickens and Living Forage
Take a Course at Forested! First of all, I must let you know about my friend LincolnSmith’s workshops series at his forest teaching garden, Forested, this spring – here’s the link! https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14cd4a6cf3709800
Flowers for Chickens? Why? This idea is totally stolen from an inspiring website I looked at and have not been able to relocate. But search “chicken garden” and you find this subject is on flockster’s minds. Because chickens benefit enormously from grass, yet this is what lawn looks like after a winter under the tender mercies of my 13 chickens:
(It took them about 2 weeks FYI.)
The lady whose great website I cannot find plants her chicken run with living forage, grass, but things beautiful as well as tasty to peck. What an inspiration! A run could be something other than a wasteland? She is constantly on the lookout for plants which co-exist happily such as ROSES(!) – given how prone to being buggy roses are, this could be a real source of nourishment. She sets large rocks or pavers to protect roots from scratching claws. Beware the long list of chicken toxic plants – http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/627282/comprehensive-list-of-poisonous-plants-and-trees – Also listed below). So, thank you lady!! wherever you exist in the blogospere. You have changed the way I am going to manage my chickens this summer.
Edward and I had already planned to add living forage into and around the run this year – and here’s what we have so far:
A Mulberry sapling – we are growing a mulberry bush into the run. The first step was to a convince Edward not to kill it, since he considers mulberries invasive, water-stealing, horrible plants. MULBERRIES are a very nutritious food, easy to grow and tough (yes dear) and voila! free food that our chickens can feed themselves. You can see that despite Edward’s dislike, this plant is very happy. Sadly, he says, it probably will thrive. I have the roots outside the run wire, so it’s roots are protected most of the time, and leaves outside the run roof get tons of sun.
Berries – one of the areas the chickens will be guided toward is under the brambles, to clean up the fallen fruit. 
I have JUST hatched an idea to grow Black Raspberries (black caps), a plant that loves us, ACROSS a small wire paddock, so the chicks get fruit from under it and we can harvest from the top. I will post photos soon.
Less impressive at the moment is the beginning of our Vegetable Garden Tower beside the mulberry (yes, you unbelievers, I will prune the mulberry heavily! so that the tower is not shaded!). This is an idea I got from Ben Friton of Can Ya Love.
The fabric cloth will hold dirt in, and plants can be inserted to grow and hang out all the way up. Chickens can harvest their side, plus the lower regions of front when they are in Paddock 1. We can harvest the upper section. I’m going to try cukes up there. I threw this together using some old fencing and row covers from last summer. Learn more about Ben’s work from his website at www.canyalove.org. A grower friend of mine, Lincoln Smith of the teaching garden Forested (http://forested.us/), introduced me to Ben and his book Can Ya Love? which describes the creation of his vertical garden concept, and shows how he has used it to help hungry communities around the world grow their own greens.
Swiped from his website, Ben’s vegetable pillars:
Have fun in your gardens this weekend!!
HERE’s the Evil For Chickens List:
Backyard Chicken’s Comprehensive List of Plants Toxic to Chickens:
ARUM LILY
AMARYLLIS
ARALIA
ARROWHEAD VINE
AUTUMN CROCUS
AUSTRALIAN FLAMETREE
AUSTRALIAN UMBRELLA TREE
AVOCADO
AZALEA
BANEBERRY
BEANS: (CASTOR, HORSE, FAVA, BROAD, GLORY, SCARLET RUNNER,
MESCAL, NAVY, PREGATORY)
BIRD OF PARADISE
BISHOP’S WEED
BLACK LAUREL
BLACK LOCUST
BLEEDING HEART OR DUTCHMAN’S BREECHES
BLOODROOT
BLUEBONNET
BLUEGREEN ALGAE
BOXWOOD
BRACKEN FERN
BUCKTHORN
BULB FLOWERS: (AMARYLLIS, DAFFODIL, NARCISSUS, HYACINTH & IRIS)
BURDOCK
BUTTERCUP
CACAO
CAMEL BUSH
CASTOR BEAN
CALADIUM
CANA LILY
CARDINAL FLOWER
CHALICE (TRUMPET VINE)
CHERRY TREE
CHINA BERRY TREE
CHRISTMAS CANDLE
CLEMATIS (VIRGINIA BOWER)
CLIVIA
COCKLEBUR
COFFEE (SENNA)
COFFEE BEAN (RATTLEBUSH, RATTLE BOX & COFFEEWEED)
CORAL PLANT
CORIANDER
CORNCOCKLE
COYOTILLO
COWSLIP
CUTLEAF PHILODENDRON
DAFFODIL
DAPHNE
DATURA STRAMONIUM (ANGEL’S TRUMPET)
DEATH CAMUS
DELPHINIUM
DEVIL’S IVY
DIEFFENBACHIA (DUMB CANE)
ELDERBERRY
ELEPHANT EAR (TARO)
ENGLISH IVY
ERGOT
EUCALYPTUS (DRIED, DYED OR TREATED IN FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS)
EUONYMUS (SPINDLE TREE)
EUPHORBIA CACTUS
FALSE HELLEBORE
FLAME TREE
FELT PLANT (MATERNITY, AIR & PANDA PLANTS)
FIG (WEEPING)
FIRE THORN
FLAMINGO FLOWER
FOUR O’CLOCK
FOXGLOVE
GLOTTIDIUM
GOLDEN CHAIN
GRASS: (JOHNSON, SORGHUM, SUDAN & BROOM CORN)
GROUND CHERRY
HEATHS: (KALMIA, LEUCOTHO, PEIRES, RHODODENDRON, MTN. LAUREL,
BLACK LAUREL, ANDROMEDA & AZALEA)
HELIOTROPE
HEMLOCK: (POISON & WATER)
HENBANE
HOLLY
HONEYSUCKLE
HORSE CHESTNUT
HORSE TAIL
HOYA
HYACINTH
HYDRANGEA
IRIS IVY: (ENGLISH & OTHERS)
JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT
JASMINE (JESSAMINE)
JERUSALEM CHERRY
JIMSONWEED
JUNIPER
KY. COFFEE TREE
LANTANA (RED SAGE)
LARKSPUR
LILY OF THE VALLEY
LILY, ARUM
LOBELIA
LOCOWEED (MILK VETCH)
LOCUSTS, BLACK / HONEY
LORDS & LADIES (CUCKOOPINT)
LUPINE
MALANGA
MARIJUANA (HEMP)
MAYAPPLE (MANDRAKE)
MEXICAN BREADFRUIT
MEXICAN POPPY
MILKWEED, COTTON BUSH
MISTLETOE
MOCK ORANGE
MONKSHOOD
MOONSEED
MORNING GLORY
MTN. LAUREL
MUSHROOMS, AMANITA
MYRTLE
NARCISSUS
NETTLES
NIGHTSHADES: (DEADLY, BLACK, GARDEN, WOODY, BITTERSWEET,
EGGPLANT, JERUSALEM CHERRY)
OAK
OLEANDER
OXALIS
PARSLEY
PEACE LILY
PERIWINKLE
PHILODENDRONS: (SPLIT LEAF, SWISS CHEESE, HEART-LEAF)
PIGWEED
POINCIANA
POINSETTIA
POISON IVY
POISON HEMLOCK
POISON OAK: (WESTERN & EASTERN)
POKEWEED
POTATO SHOOTS
POTHOS
PRIVET
PYRACANTHA
RAIN TREE
RANUNCULUS, BUTTERCUP
RAPE
RATTLEBOX, CROTALARIA
RED MAPLE
RED SAGE (LANTANA)
RHUBARB LEAVES
RHODODENDRONS
ROSARY PEA SEEDS
SAND BOX TREE
SKUNK CABBAGE
SORREL (DOCK)
SNOW DROP
SPURGES: (PENCIL TREE, SNOW-ON-MTN, CANDELABRA, CROWN OF THORNS)
STAR OF BETHLEHEM
SWEET PEA
SWISS CHEESE PLANT (MONSTERA)
TANSY RAGWORT
TOBACCO
UMBRELLA PLANT
VETCH: HAIRY/COMMON
VIRGINIA CREEPER
WATTLE
WEEPING FIG
WHITE CEDAR, CHINA BERRY
WISTERIA
YEWS
YELLOW JASMINE
…I hope you’re still here and read through the list.
I know that as I typed it, I was reminded of many very common
plants that I had forgotten were unsafe for my flock.
Tomato Trauma
I have a son who loves plastic pots with an love that is really obsession. To him only the pot is real, certainly not what is in the pot. And so when I found the transplanted tomato seedling dumped out upside down again this morning, I wasn’t actually surprised or even outraged., although I did fume and spit flew from my mouth in a pointless effort to communicate to him: “That tomato needs that pot!! That tomato is USING that pot! You cannot have that pot right now!!”
This is the second time for this poor seedling, which has had the misfortune to be transplanted into a very nice red pot. I wish I could know if the trauma it’s endured will make it stronger, in the way that our human bodies develop scar tissue where they heal.
I listened to a radio program on NPR (this winter I think) about the results of testing organic produce to see whether it had more health benefits than commercially grown produce. The testing found that organic treatment did not increase the vitamin and mineral content of a plant. The reporter went on to say that what the organic plant did offer was a greater number of antioxidants, those cancer fighting compounds that everyone in health food talks about.
Apparently plants raised without sprays to kill pests and fungi for them, have to fight harder to protect themselves. They have to build up defenses to do that, and when we eat the plant we consume these “defenses”ourselves, strengthening ourselves (it is theorized) against what attacks us.
As I tipped the transplant back over to get these photos (yes, I did. poor plant) I noticed that the newly replanted roots gripped the soil tightly, holding it in place as the pot went over. You’re not doing that to me again! I will have to mark this plant and keep track of its progress, to see if this one becomes extra healthy or produces extra fruit…
Maybe we’ve discovered something!
To read more about my special needs son and his obsessions, check out embracingchaos.net.
Winter Babies
Past time.
My neighbor Mrs. Q. has had her seeds planted since early February. Maybe January. Not that we are competing.
I did get mine in while it was still barely February. It’s easy to waste time looking backwards, wishing you had already done something, or done it better, so I congratulated myself on overcoming that hang-up and justgettingthoseseedsindirt!!
But I hate staring at those trays of dark blank soil, watering, waiting, feeling like all is lost. I actually have pretty good luck with germination, but I go through this every spring anyway. Like an old-fashioned father, anxiously pacing the hallways outside, removed from the process of birth, wondering when I will get to see the new-born life. It’s easy to be gloomy too soon. Some seeds need a loooong germination. Celery is one of those, but last year after I’d almost given up hope, I wound up with 10+ plants.
Every year I learn more about being the midwife, rather than the anguished excluded dad in this process. I have learned that I don’t need a heating pad (although it can help!), just a grow-light and/or sunny window, and patience. I have learned how important regular watering is. Last year I learned a trick for germination of difficult seeds (like flower seeds) is an old plastic salad or berry box, with the plastic snap down lids, but ventilated too. Keeps things the right amount moist, but not soggy.
Just 4 days later I feel silly for my gloom as the first seeds sprout. How exhilarating to see those seedlings fling themselves upward out of the soil!! My kids try to feign enthusiasm as I drag them in to rhapsodize over the flecks of green. How humbling! and how miraculous! – all that gravity bearing down on such a tiny organism – say a basil seed and sprout – expanding and pushing up through soil particles which are to it like boulders. And yet the sprout heaves them out of the way and leaps forth, given the right blend of moisture, warmth, and light.
Tonight I watched a show about growing food, big scale. Farmers brought to court by the American seed engineering corporation Monsanto, farmers encouraged to buy expensive newly developed seed, farmers no longer allowed to save their own seed — meanwhile, America eats on, blissfully ignorant of the struggles and politics involved in bringing their food to table. And mostly incurious apparently about the quality of the food they wind up with.
It’s a relief to step away from a sense of powerlessness, and turn my attention to the trays and pots of baby sprouts under the grow light. Those sprouts which, with care and a little luck, will provide a large part of our eating this summer.
I don’t control this miracle; I have no copyright. I simply rejoice that no one can prevent me from participating in a wonderful ritual of life – the getting of my food.
Cranky Chickens Love Cabbage
Remember that back in November I added 5 young hens at the point of lay to my flock of 8 older girls. It wasn’t too pretty for a while, as the older hens came to accept the new ones. We had some injuries. By late January I am pleased to report that everyone was getting along, one group not two, with the hierarchies that chicken social life requires. Many thanks to my vet Dr. Sarah Chapman, who suggested making visual barriers across the run. I used cardboard panels and put feed and water in several locations. Now every bird can eat and drink in peace.
While out at coffee not long ago my friend – call her Sheila – suggested hanging a cabbage by a string for my chickens, to give them something to peck at instead of each other. She had saved the idea for me on her Pintrest page. See for yourself — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0DQyRrjewU
Thank you Sheila for a great reminder – eating gets pretty boring for chickens during the winter, with no grass and few bugs to vary the diet of processed food…
I happened to have part of a Chinese cabbage in the kitchen. I tied a stick across the bottom to keep it attached while being pecked…
…and tried hanging it up in various places, looking for the right location and height.
!
Hanging the cabbage in a bush didn’t work too well. I got only quizzical looks “Huh?”
Hanging the cabbage on the fence was the trick. At first the hens didn’t recognize this pale green blob as food at all.
They ran over to peck at the leaves I stripped off, but walked away from the pinata feast. And then the AHA moment—
“Hey! – that’s FOOOD!”
Since I tried this twice with success, I have come across debate online about cabbage being toxic to chickens. It is my impression that chickens like most animals will not eat something that isn’t good for them (sheep may be an exception to this rule), unless they are desperate. Do not allow them to be desperate, and don’t offer any one food to excess. Offer a wide range of veggie scraps, seeds, and PLENTY of mulchy stuff for them to dig through for entertainment. Chickens aren’t bright, but if they aren’t bored to death in confinement or hunger for something that isn’t pellet, they should know what’s for dinner.
Christmas Lights For Chickens
We were at December 12th. Almost the darkest of the year. Although we had 13 chickens, we were getting only 5 eggs a day. Shucks.
Then one morning I plugged in the old heat lamp I keep out in the coop, just before getting out there to feed and water the girls. That night, what do you know, 7 eggs! But a heat lamp is 250 watts. That’s a lot of energy to run, especially if you are prone to forgetting to unplug it after an hour as I am. (I keep it in the coop for really cold nights, and for when we have baby chicks.)
I hooked up some chili lights – a string of white Christmas tree lights with the occasional re plastic chili pepper popped over the bulb, looped over a stick inside the top of the house. I plugged it in before releasing the girls into their run and their grub. And then plugged it in again at dusk, as they were coming in to settle on their roosts.
Wow. That night 9 eggs! Now we’re in business!
Now we have eggs to eat and some to sell too, which pays for chicken maintenance. And if I forget to unplug, it isn’t so bad to run a short string of little lights for too many hours. Do the girls enjoy the cozy warm glow of festive lights in their coop? I only know they seem content.
Just don’t leave those lights on all night – chickens, like humans, need their dark time.
Dreaming and Clucking
So the garden is shutting down. Pretty soon we get out the seed catalogs and gear up to start seedlings. But for the moment it’s not a bad idea to stop and daydream.
Time to feel grateful for chickens, who keep on producing food and eating up kitchen vegetable leftovers right through the winter months. I can hear them from my studio window, clucking around – and I wonder if I can summon the energy to start a red wiggler worm compost box so they could have worms to eat through the winter…
I could do that. But it’s not a bad idea to just daydream about the high moments of last summer’s garden, and take a break, instead of starting a new project. Suburban growers are lucky to be able to take a few months off and exist on the plentiful supply of produce that suburban grocerystores provide, and remember the season’s highlights.
Last summer, we had unbelievable peaches, mostly a gift of the micro climate in my backyard..and the fiesty bulldog puppy chasing squirrels away. Can it happen again? Will our peach trees fight their way this year through Maryland humidity? Will I get that Surround product out and spray it on early, to give the fruit its best chance at survival?
In December I can do anything…
So Harvest the Broccoli Already
I wanted it to be bigger. At least two meals worth.
These broc plants have fought back from cabbage worm attack, survived dry spells when neither the weather nor I remembered to moisten the soil, come back from some freezing nights. They are survivors. But they aren’t very big.
What I hate about suburban growing is that it seem to be precious – a hobby for dilettantes or wealthy suburbanites who have no need of success. My goal is to prove that growing plants on a suburban half acre can produce a significant amount of food.
…But with the cold weather forecasted, I figure I’d better take my broccoli now or plan to throw it on the compost pile.
Next time I will water more regularly, so that the plants have every advantage as the sun gives less light each day on my fall garden. And next spring we can try to get the side shoots that grow up around after you cut off the main head.
Turns out the plentiful leaves are delicious steamed and buttered. The leaves can also be used chopped up and added to the dogs’ food and chopped up into the chicken’s morning scraps.
Always more to learn
Chickens Paddocks
Chicken paddocks is a great idea. I have mentioned it before, and I am sure I will mention it again. For years we’ve allowed our chickens half the day in our back yard, for their health, for better eggs, because I am soft hearted — because they seemed to get into it no matter what I did anyway to stop them!…
But we really have had enough. We wanted our yard back, our lawn back. Our patio without poops on it, our flower gardens nicely covered in mulch, our straw mulched veggie beds mulched in straw. Instead of the lawn being covered in straw, the plants bare and broken by searching claws and beaks. An old classmate chatted with me at our last reunion and told me she thought of me every time she let her chickens out in the yard. And what she thought was “Yuck! how can she stand this??” Well, she can’t stand it any more.
I was already heading in the direction of somehow containing and rotating my girls after reading Harvey Ussery’s recent article (Organic Gardening Magazine, Sept. 2014) about creating debris piles for his Icelandic chickens – “Icies” – who love to forage in debris. Ussery is all about sustainability – helping chickens access fresh natural foods rather than expensive, likely rancid, processed pellet. Chickens naturally prefer it. Then I came across Paul Wheaton’s blog about Chicken Paddocks – and that clinched it. Paddocks combines all the things we want from and for our chickens. The point is to create a rotation for them, so they can be in a space with bugs, new actively decomposing debris piles, hopefully grass, and then be moved on to the next fresh one, before they are standing on a bare patch of mud. No animal wants to stand around all day on mud. Ok, earthworms. They can’t stay healthy in that setting.
I am not willing to move my chicken coop and run around the yard – ours is permanent, at the center of gardens. So our paddocks will encircle the run – and maybe we will get more creative in the summer. For now, they have three.
Edward and our 16 year old son Oskar, motivated by the idea of no more chickens mucking up the lawn, got right to it and have now fenced off Paddock One attaching tall 2x2s to existing fence and stapling plastic mesh to that. It’s about 10 feet high so the girls don’t just fly over it (ha-ha see ya sucker!) as they have tended to do. At least they always come back at night to roost. Our very patient neighbors are also relieved. In a month, we’ll send them out into Paddock Two, which is our kitchen garden. No grass, but they LOVE to dig in the soft soil (any plants that are still active I’ll have wired over). I am going to cover all the pathways with heavy straw, and they love to kick straw around. Paddock Three will be the garden beds to the front. Any of these areas could be subdivided..we’ll see how it goes.
I can’t complete this post without admiring the new roof Edward has put over the run, so the hens will be dry as the winter weather starts in. Corrugated metal interspersed with corrugated plastic that will let the light through. Last winter I spread layers of plastic sheeting over the top, and that was ok – until melting days, when a hundred tiny holes let all the drips through. I have a plan to collect that water into a drum, but let’s get it roofed first. Winter Vortex, we’re ready!!
Suburban Growing 