Chickens loose in the garden

Enjoy some photos of the chickens eating some our weeds! Flint was very diligent protecting them, and eventually eating their poop....

Oranges!!!

Harvested 14 pounds of oranges, and only managed to make a little bit of orange juice. I will never complain about orange juice prices again.

OUR FIRST EGG!

Happy Easter everybody!

Nicky and I had a great one, since we got our first egg!!!! 

 We noticed one of our chickens was squawking funny in the morning, making sounds that we have never heard them make before:

















 Later in the afternoon, I checked on her, and she was alone in the coop, pacing back and forth on top of a shelf that we had on the upper level of the coop. She started scratching at the plywood and was panting, and seemed freaked out, so we left her alone. Later, we saw her come out of the coop and appear normal, drinking water, and looking for something to eat, but when we checked the upper shelf, we found a loverly egg!

We scrambled it, and had it with our dinner salad, and it was super good!  I look forward to getting lots and lots of eggs!

Also, we our plantings are starting to get big! On the left are the veggies, which I wish I had planted earlier given how warm this spring has been. On the right, we have a ton of milkweed that we are going to plant around the garden to attract monarch butterflies.

Keep on planting!

How to flip a compost heap

Howdy all,

So we flipped our compost heaps about a month ago, but took lots of pictures so that we could upload them, as a guide on how to flip a compost heap. 

We have three compost heaps right now, since we are trying very hard to make lots of good compost for our next growing season. Our dirt tends to be very dense, and clay rich, so we need to add some organics to help break up the soil. Here you see two of our compost heaps, which I moved into a sunny part of the yard, dramatically increasing how fast it breaks down material.

Having two is great because you can remove the broken down soil at the bottom of the heaps, and then concentrate the remains into one, leaving the other empty for new material.




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Here is our right compost heap, which also has a thick layer of leaf cuttings that are barely broken down:

Here you see the left compost heap, which is nearly full. At the top is a think blanket of grass cutting from our lawn mower, which clearly are no where near being broken down:

If you dig down a little bit, you can see that the material progressively gets more and more broken down. The rule is that if you can tell what something is, it needs to cook more.

Here is a photo of the massive grubs we get in our compost. They are the babys of large green beatles, which I have seen land in the compost heaps, burrow down, and eventually I find their dead bug bodies.

I took the unbroken down compost from the left compost heap, and moved it into the right heap. Eventually I reached material that was sufficiently broken down, which I then put into buckets, and sprinkled around the yard.

This material is very much broken down, despite the few leaves on the top. This stuff is black gold!

Our compost heaps are open at the bottom, so after I have removed enough material, I pull out the compost heap to make the shoveling easier. The left compost heap is better built, so this isn't a problem. Our right compost heap is a bit cheaper, so I have to be delicate or the plastic breaks.

Black gold!

Another rule of thumb is that broken down compost should be hard to move with a pitch fork, given that the material is broken up enough that it falls between the cracks.

Empty compost heap.

I usually like to flip compost heaps the same day that I plan to do a bunch of plant trimming, or after I have built up a stockpile.

 I like to put the fresh material at the bottom of the compost heap, and then bury it in the less broken down material left over from the previous batch of compost (which should have all of the microbes).

Now is the hard part, moving the material from one compost heap to the other. Definitely wear gloves, and have a nice sturdy pitch fork. Once you have moved everything into the final compost heap, you should have lots room for new material.

Keep on composting!

Pretty Garden pictures: Part 2

Howdy all,

Hope you enjoy photos of various things from around the garden. If you any idea what things are, please let us know!

poppy:

Yarrow:

Nasturtiums:

Little Daisies:

Pink rose:

Milk weed:

Cherry Blossoms:

Apple Blossom:

Lavender:

Lavender and a bee!

Ornamental Passion fruit (the weirdest damn flower we have in the yard):

Enjoy!

Loverly flowers from our garden: part 1

Here are some random photos of pretty flowers from our garden! I have no idea what some of them are, so please post at the bottom if you do know, and I will edit the post : )

Pretty Yellow roses from our huge rose bush.

Photo of Cosmos: Thanks Amanda!

Marrigold: Thanks Amanda!

Yellow in the background is Coneflower: Thanks again Amanda!

Red roses on the lower slope.











Enjoy!