Let's Get Growing!

Whew!  Busy couple of days here. I'm almost afraid to jinx it by saying it, but I think spring is here.

Some wildflowers are blooming.

The hummingbirds are back. Haven't been able to catch them in a photo, though.

Last year on May 1, the hummingbirds were probably regretting being here. Poor things had to weather a late-season blizzard.

Things are sprouting in the garden.

Garlic

Red onions

Spinach

Lettuce

Kale

Garlic Chives

Iris

Hollyhocks

Peony

Johnny Jump Ups

And of course these.....

It's about four weeks until the last spring frost, and time to start planting.  This weekend, I put in parsnips, tatsoi, carrots,  radishes, green onions, and beets plus more lettuce and spinach.

The gardening method I use, Square Foot Gardening, allows you to plant almost unbelievable amounts in very small spaces. It's because the soilless mix that's used instead of dirt is chock full of nutrients and you do not plant in rows.

This is one of my beds with the square foot grid as a planting guide.

For example, in one square foot of garden space, you plant 16 carrots. Here's a square foot ready for carrot seeds.

One square foot will grow 9 parsnips. Or 9 beets.  I know what you're thinking...that's way too crowded. Trust me. It's not. Square Foot Gardening is a proven method and the plant density is for real!  

If you are curious about Square Foot Gardening, here is a link to the official website.

Square Foot Gardening


Click here for the "Cliff Notes" summary of what Square Foot Gardening is all about.

What is Square Foot Gardening?

A simple internet search will provide many more informative sites, too.  If you have a four foot by four foot space to build a raised garden bed, you will be able to grow more veggies in it than you ever thought possible!

Here is my indoor sprouting operation. 

There are odd reflections in the photo because I'm using foil to reflect the grow lights.

I've planted yellow pear tomatoes, Romanesco broccoli, mini red bell peppers, sage, dill, oregano, basil, cilantro, and St. John's Wort.  These will all go outside in the garden around the middle of May, which is after the danger of any frosts.

At the beginning of May, I'll do the main outdoor planting which will include two kinds of sweet corn, eggplant, two more types of tomato, cucumbers, plus a variety of herbs, beans and squash.

Between now and then I need to build trellises for the beans and squash (trying squash vertically this year) and finish the drip irrigation system.   

Tonight, the forecast is for rain. Not snow. Hooray! First time in 2014 that the precipitation will fall as a liquid and not snow!

How is your garden coming along? I'd love it if you'd share photos! Be sure to tell us where you are located.

Deep Doo-doo

I know you all are curious about how the babies are doing with their foster Momma. They're are about a month old now and growing fast.

Aren't they cute?

Momma has been given a real name by the daughter of a colleague of mine.  "I" named her Lola, which I think is an adorable and fitting name for her. Much better than the boring "Momma" I've been calling her!

Lola has started taking her brood outside to free-range for short periods of time.  The babies are growing up!

For the first time they have been mingling with the rest of the flock. I was afraid for them, since there's always the risk they'd be pecked to death by another chicken.  

Happily, the flock pretty much ignored the babies. I only saw a baby get pecked one time. She was at the food when another hen came over to eat. The baby didn't move out of the way of the hen, so she got a peck on the back. That sent her running back to Lola, who seemed to say, "What did you expect when you don't yield to someone higher on the pecking order?"

Like all youngsters, they are learning their place in society and how to fit in.  

DEEP LITTER

I've been using a technique called the "Deep Litter" (DL) method inside the chicken coop. Instead of cleaning out the bedding in the coop weekly or monthly, you just add more new litter on top of the old. The layers build up and compost right there on the coop floor.  Coop cleaning happens only once or twice a year. 

But doesn't it stink?  Nope. Not if you're doing it right. If there is an ammonia smell, you don't have enough litter on the floor!

I use pine shavings on the coop floor. I started with about a 3" thick layer when I put Team Omelette in the coop back in July. My coop has a dirt floor, which is ideal for the DL method. But you can use DL with any type of coop floor.  

All I do is add another couple of inches of fresh pine shavings every couple of weeks, or when it starts to look dirty in the coop. The fresh layer is added on top of the existing shavings.

An important part of the DL method is stirring up the bedding so the wet droppings can dry out.  I'll rake it around myself sometimes, but it's easier to let the chickens do the work. Once a week, I'll throw some grain down on the floor. The Team busily scratches around to find the grain and in the process rakes the bedding for me.  Cool huh?

If you start to notice an ammonia smell, your bedding is too wet.  Throw some more bedding down, then rake it in to help dry things out. 

Since I started the DL process in the summer, by the time winter set in there was a thick layer of litter on the coop floor. The composting action generates a small amount of heat, which keeps the inside of the coop five to ten degrees warmer than the outside air temp. Believe me, in the middle of a Colorado winter, those few additional degrees make a difference!

Now that it's time to get the garden ready for spring planting, it's also time to clean out the coop. 

You can see how broken down and composted it all is.

Be sure to leave a thin layer of the old stuff so that the helpful microbes in it can get to work on all the new bedding and pooh that's about to be deposited.

I have a new ranch hand, "M", who came over to help me with this coop cleaning. We took four of these carts full of composted bedding out of the coop.

You can put all that old bedding into your compost pile. I'm simply digging it into the garden beds. It's mostly composted anyway.

There's still a small risk that the high nitrogen in the uncomposted, fresher pooh will burn the seedlings.  It's a risk I'm comfortable with.  There's not that much of it and it'll sit there for a few weeks to a month or so before anything is planted. I think it'll mellow out in that time and not burn the seedlings.

Now put down a nice layer of fresh bedding on the coop floor and start the DL process all over again.

Team Omelette loves it when there's a fresh layer of shavings in the coop. They busily scratch through to see if there's anything edible in it.

I'll let this build up through spring and summer then clean it out again in the fall. It doesn't get much easier than this!  No more cleaning the coop every week.  Using the DL method is really just composting inside your coop.  

Along with my nifty feed and water systems, the DL method really cuts down on the amount of work it takes to keep a flock of chickens.  Work smart, not hard!

Oh, if you decide the DL method is right for your flock, do not use diatomaceous earth or any pesticides in the coop. It'll kill off all of the helpful microbes and organisms that are working to compost the litter!

Good luck and let me know how it works for you.

There's no real reason for posting this photo of Kipp taking a siesta other than I think he's an awesome horse and riding partner!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Oh goodness, I'm exhausted! It's been a crazy, mad dash to get the garden together and everything planted before it's too late in the season. Even so, I'm afraid that my short growing season will prevent me from harvesting some of what I've planted.

Remember this little low tunnel/hoop house that trucked along bravely through the entire winter?

I took the whole thing down to replace the hoops with ones made from 3/4" PVC. 

To make it look nicer, I've spray painted the PVC with Krylon Fusion paint. You know, so it doesn't look like a bunch of plumbing pipe.

The first color I tried was a brushed steel, but rejected it since it looked like metal conduit. Still looked like plumbing pipe. 

So I went with a hunter green.

Looks a lot better than the white PVC.

The next project was going to a rabbitry and an alpaca ranch to pick up poop to add to the garden. Both of those animals' poop will not burn plants so you don't have to compost it before you add it to the garden. You can just mix it right in.

I got about 300 pounds of rabbit poop. The lady who owned the rabbitry called them "Bunny Berries". She had it all neatly bagged up for me. Stunk to high heaven, though!

Bags o' Bunny Berries

Then it was on to the Silken Suri Alpaca Ranch.  This was a 'shovel your own' deal. 

I didn't even make a dent in the poop pile at the alpaca place. She has about sixty alpacas and the pile of poop was huge!  The lady invited me to come back any time to take more. 

After these two poop runs, the truck was a bit fragrant. A poo-pourri, if you will. 

I also added some store-bought compost to the planting mix. This one apparently thinks "no poop" is a big selling point.

 Makes me laugh...I just finished unloading two truckloads of it but this particular compost is poop free. Maybe there are people who don't want poop in their garden? Not even composted poop, which has no germs?

In between the poop runs and painting the PVC, I started planting.

Silver Queen sweet corn.

Some of the tomatoes and the eggplant safely sheltering in wall o' waters. The night I planted these, the temperature dropped to 32 degrees. The wall o' waters did their job and the plants are just fine.

A tomato plant inside it's wall o' water.

I also put in some carrots and a couple varieties of lettuce. 

Two days later, a deer discovered a hole in the deer netting and got into the bed where I'd planted all the lettuces, spinach and green onions. Once it was inside, I don't think it could figure out how to get out and panicked. It eventually got out, but between what it ate and what it tore up while trying to get out, the entire bed was devastated.

I replanted everything, patched the hole in the deer netting and am starting all over again. I'm kicking myself though because I knew that hole was there and put off repairing it. All my fault!

Over in the perennial garden things are coming right along.

The lilacs are in bud.

Iris

Columbines

Hollyhocks

Not sure what this is. Peony, maybe?

The whole valley is beautifully green!

Time to wrap this up. I'm pooped! (pun intended)  I've got to get up early and plant more sweet corn and two varieties of beans!  

G'night all!