March Gardening

Our camera is broken :-( so this post will be without photos of the 2 inch tall tomato starts, the teeny tiny lavender from seed starts, and the finally turning green, starting to look alive yard.

I planted the tomatoes & eggplant from seed, oh, about a month ago now, and they are just now getting their second leaves. This year I did Heinz and Couer de Bue tomatoes from last years seeds and a new variety-- Mortgage Broker. Strangely, the old seeds are faring better than the new ones and I don't know that we'll end up with more than two Mortgage Broker plants.

I put in lettuces and kale from starts two weeks ago, and then promptly started worrying about them since it's barely hovering around 40 at night, and many nights we're closer to 35 than 40. They seem to be doing ok, now that they are protected from the greens-seeking chickens.

The chickens! Who are laying again! All three are back to business (or so it seems from our egg count, though our confidence in Goldie is so low that neither of us will truly believe it until we SEE it).  It's great to have overflowing egg cartons in our fridge and the daily egg-hunt underway.

A week ago I put some sprouting out of control kitchen potatoes (i.e. potatoes we bought from the store and intended to eat, not seed potatoes) in the ground. And I supplemented them with three varieties of seed potatoes today-- Purple Majesty, fingerlings, and Caribe super-early.  We'll be swimming in potatoes come summer, and I'll wonder what I was thinking, but if there's any urban farm activity that I enjoy more than the egg hunting, it's the potato harvest! It's far too much fun to dig around in the dirt and find dozens and dozens of potatoes in there. (I'm also a big fan of the way that potato plants look when they are full and flowery and so un-potato looking.)

This March has been WET. Last March was dry and springy; I remember last March so quickly because it was our first month in our new house.  We're continuing to hunker down (all the while hoping that April brings SPRING. And SUN.)

Since I can't post a true garden photo, here's an update on our resident rodent controller, who also happens to be the best resident lap warmer, all grown up (or mostly anyway):

Snow and Seedlings

It felt rather ironic to be planting the first seeds 2011, in the warmth of the kitchen, while snow fell outside and the forecast calls for the most snow we've seen in two years. But being home sick meant having ten minutes to spend playing in dirt. I filled our kitchen windowsill with soon-to-be-seedlings of the tomato, eggplant and lavender varieties. One kind of eggplant, and three types of tomatoes (Couer di bue, Heinz and Mortgage Broken-- love the names!), and an experiment--lavender. I have failed at every attempt to grow herbs from seeds, but haven't tried lavender before so thought I'd give it a shot.

I planted all of the seeds in seed starting mix and in easily transplantable containers, and will set up lights the next time I'm up off the couch. Now back to snuggling with my personal heaters on this cold day, Stella Dog and Maddie kitty, and willing this winter cold to take a hike.

New Year's Farm Goals

The quiet season continues. Today the chicken water was frozen, well, for the last 7 days or so really. Today the ground is solid, the leaves are brittle and full of crunch, and our hose is frozen under our fence, rendering it impossible to move and reminding us just how cold it is out there.  Last week the first seed catalog arrived though, and I studied up on new varieties of tomatoes, early green beans and lettuces galore. Next week the kitten gets spayed, and begins to fully undertake her permaculture role of Miss Huntress.

Though it's dark and frozen outside today, February is on the horizon. And with it the time for starting tomato seeds.  So the 2011 garden goals list is underway. Main goal: to protect the strawberries from the chickens and Stella Dog, so that we get more than 10 of them this year. From there the list look like this:
-plant a tree, or two, with Friends of Trees in early February in our parking strip--fruit trees
-start my tomatoes inside again this year, the third year of tomatoes from seed
-more potatoes!
-skip the peppers? maybe it was the crappy weather this summer but they were less than impressive and not worth the space they took up
-stagger lettuce planting more
-finish hardware cloth installation on the chicken coop
-rain barrels! in place before next fall
-a raised bed in the front yard? have to see what our trees do in terms of creating new shade before we commit to this

Phew. I think that's enough to get us started.

Quiet Season?

The last five months are a blur of busy, busy and more busy.  In short, the days were long and the happenings were many. Our chickens started laying eggs in late July, and quickly earned a great deal respect, as they became the pets with  a payback. We left all our animals in the care of some fabulous pet and garden sitters for a trip to Colorado for a good friend's wedding. We enjoyed visits from friends and family, and had so much fun showing them our new corner of the world. We watched the days get shorter, and the to do list get longer with the addition of Miss Madeline, our latest (and last for hopefully a good long while) pet.

Miss Madeline, aka Miss Kitten, or, usually, Maddie is a grey tabby cat who joined our family as a complement to the chickens.  Her purpose (other than entertaining us with her kitten antics, and keeping Stella Dog company while we're away during the day) is to keep the rodents, attracted by the constant buffet of chicken food that they scatter around the run of their coop, at bay. We've been thus far successful at keeping things clean enough to ward off any hungry rodents, but have noticed some tunneling in the run lately, and Maddie will hopefully be solving that once she's old enough to have free range of the yard.  She's proving herself to be quite the hunter already, with spiders being promptly caught, played with momentarily and then devoured, and her poor stuffed bird toy has died a thousand times over by now.

We are slightly worried that she'll continue to view Stella Dog as the best recipient of all things hunted--currently bringing Stella her catch doesn't arouse much interest from her, more of a "what do you want me to do with this stuffed bird toy?" look, but I have a feeling a dead mouse might elicit more curiosity and potentially be viewed as an excellent snack. Things to look forward to.

The first year of our garden was productive, despite a colder and rainier than usual summer. Our tomato plants, of which there were about ten, yielded enough tomatoes for us to get sick of tomato sauce and can enough for most of the winter.  We won't make it through the spring or early summer on our supply, but I'm neither interested in canning that many hours, nor tending more than a dozen or so tomato plants. Because we didn't have the long spells of hot, dry days the tomatoes didn't start ripening until mid-September, for the most part, a full six weeks later than last year. On the flip side, we still have tomatoes turning red on our counter right now.

We planted enough basil to satisfy our basil-loving household--I think we had five basil plants in all. Two japanese eggplants produced enough little eggplants for a couple of dishes--the weather slowed these guys down a lot.  Our green beans, or future dilly beans, as the case may be, were very productive! And the kale and chard, well, they weren't the super-producers our last year's crop was, and the chickens managed to eat every leaf that did grow, so we need to reassess the deep greens for next year.  The salad greens were amazing this year--after failing to show up for the party last year. The strawberries were being eaten by everything but us this year, and we were underwhelmed by berries for our breakfasts and desserts. Potatoes were a garden favorite again. Maybe because it's like a treasure hunt when you dig them up, or maybe because they multiply to greatly, but I love garden potatoes.

It's November now, and we've finished putting the garden to bed, with a liberal blanketing of leaves and some hen house manure mixed in they'll sleep until spring. I am experimenting with some cover crops--crimson clover and fava beans, in a few areas of the garden too.

Our attention has already turned inward, and we've resumed the front bedroom painting project we left off on the first sunny day last March.  A key element to living in this climate is learning to live the long days to the fullest, and sleep in the winter. Like the garden.

June Gloom & And Then There Were 3

In L.A. they call the foggy/smoggy gray days in June the "June Gloom", and Portland has been majoring in June Gloom weather this month.  Which means the garden is growing slowly this year, and we're being forced to practice patience.

We also had a gloomy week in the chicken coop, because we had to say goodbye to one of our little birds. Polly, renamed Paulie, started crowing... It started off as a strange broken car alarm yelp of a noise, and within four days was nearing full on rooster crow. The mad search to find a new home ended with me having to scoop Paulie into a wire cage for the man who was taking him off to... well, I don't know what his plans for him were.

It was an interesting moment. On the one hand, I wanted to know where he was going. Because I picked him out when he was two days old and taught him how to drink, and watched him grow into a chicken. On the other hand, I knew I couldn't keep him and whatever his fate had to re-home him.  I also eat meat, and that added an additional element of "I need to be ok with whatever he is going to do with him". So I didn't ask.

I can only assume he was not planning to keep him as a pet, but who knows. He was a pretty rooster and maybe he is off to father dozens of other pretty chickies.

So now there are three chickens in our coop. And they are all thrilled to run around the yard and trample the garden if I don't chase them away quickly enough. The two thirds of the yard that are open to trampling don't interest them nearly as much as those baby plants behind the poor excuse for a fence.

Photos to come...

Garden update: early May

Friday was a big day in the garden-- our soil and compost (one cubic foot of each) was delivered and I set about digging up the lawn where the raised beds would go.  It was *hard* work, but I made it through one entire eight by four foot bed in two hours, and then hauled the dirt to fill the bed in using a bucket. Note to self, borrow a wheelbarrow next time.

Mark helped me finish the other two beds on Saturday and the rest of the tomatoes got into the ground. Just in time as a few of them weren't looking too happy to still be in their little pots.  The tomatoes that I'd planted in walls of water last week all made it, but don't appear to have grown very much, so we'll see how they fare in the long run.  I planted four small basil starts, and one large basil plant (Trader Joe's for $2.99--who can say no to that?! I've already named it Pesto).

I planted two yellow zucchini starts and a row of black beauty zucchini from seeds.  One entire bed will be wildflowers, and I got those seeds down just in time for the rain to start.  One eggplant and one jalapeno start went into the ground as did two teeny tiny pepper plants that never turned into much indoors, but are still alive. Gardening is an experiment right?

We started eating lettuces and arugula this weekend- yum! And the second round of peas are up, the swiss chard is up, and the bush beans popped through the topsoil as well.  The potatoes are flourishing, no flowers yet, but they are happy looking plants.  I bought two blueberry bushes- one an early berry and one a late season berry, and put them in alongside the other two tiny blueberry bushes outside the kitchen window.

Next weekend is our housewarming party, so we're trying to power through the rest of the garden set up this week. Can't wait for the strawberries to come in!

Watching Chick TV

I should take a photo of the view of the chicken coop that we have from our bed-- we love watching "Chick TV" out our window.  Though they are hardly "chicks" any more- at 12 weeks today I'd say they are resembling full fledged chickens much more than the tiny peeping fluffballs I brought home in a box.

In sadder chicken news, our neighbors behind us lost a chicken to a raccoon on Sunday morning. Unfortunately we heard the entire thing because our window was open.  It was a reality check about getting too attached and the importance of making sure the coop stays fortified.  As long as the girls are in the henhouse they are safe and secure, and the run should also be secure but until the raccoon tests it, it's hard to know. Our neighbors chickens were in the run because it was early morning and they had just come down for the day.  I certainly haven't been jumping out of bed in the pre-dawn to let ours out of the coop after that morning though...

Right now it's getting dark and I am watching our chickens start making their way up to the henhouse. Goldilocks always likes to go to bed first, and claims her spot on the far end of the roost. Rose usually follows her up and cozies up to Goldilocks. The other two generally lag a little and take their time going up to bed.  Hyper generally tries to cajole Polly up for a while before giving up on her. But thankfully she figured out that she should go up the ladder at night--now if only she'd get up on the roost herself...