Suburban Destruction

It's been Forever! Season 2: Spring Planning

2010-02-22T14:04:00.000-08:00

Haven't been keeping up to date on this thing, but now that spring is approaching and our second season at our place needs planning I am going to try and stay on top of this.

Wanted to share these websites. This one has complied data on weather and temperature so you use this to estimate your last frost date in your area. The data is organized in many different categories so you can find out a lot of detailed records for the weather and temps for years and years past. There are other ones where you just type in your zip code and it spits it out but I really like looking at all the stats because you can see trends on a daily monthly or yearly basis and then use your own knowledge to make an estimate about when the last frost might be. The last frost for the Eureka area from 2009 was March 11th. The last frost average from 1971-2000 with a 97% probability rating is January 28th.

This one is a spread sheet that helps you to figure out when you need to start seeds indoors and plant them outside based on your last frost date. It is a short list of commonly grown crops, but you can probably use the ones that are there to approximate any others you might need.

Last year we started our seeds in early February sometime and I think it was too early. Not only did we not have a place to put them in the ground until May, but they never really took off and I think it is because we got a cold front while they were still very tender and also they may not have gotten enough nutrients at the right time. We used a seed starting mix, which is light and fluffy neutral medium. It doesn't have any nutrients in it because the seeds themselves store the food they need to get going and send out shoots and roots. At certain point there is a need for external food. I think this point may vary from crop to crop but I am going to look into this more specifically in my plant prop class. This has also been a question for me because I am really interested in growing micro greens, but don't really know what the protocol would be far far as when to start feeding the greens in seed start mix or weather using a medium with a particular nutrient ratio would be better. I will post on this when I figure it out.

Midseason Progress

2009-09-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Chickens and Roosters

2009-09-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

Wyandotte mama
Beautiful Egg from Dominique
Dominique Hiding in my flower garden...it's their favorite place.

LCG's daily Routine.

Hoop House

2009-09-15T03:04:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately we don't have many pictures of building the hoop house. Above are the 1" x 20 foot pvc which we used in the creation of our greenhouse.

Planting!!!

2009-08-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

We made a chart to map out what gets plated where, how much square footage for each crop, and the spacing for the seeds or starts. This chart really helped us out a lot because we had so much space to plant... 1,200 sq feet not including the greenhouse.
Beautiful cousin Camille helping plant celery starts.

Some of our starts. Many of these were stunted because we planted them in March and didn't get the beds ready until May! We did a second batch at our friends greenhouse.

Lot's of Planning

2009-08-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

Figuring the orientation of the beds, and where the shadows will fall throughout the year. Making plant lists
Plotting the beds, with a pout.
Just a few photos of the planning process. We spent a lot of time figuring out the details. Shea helped me to learn a lot about the planning process especially many of the technical aspects that I didn't have much experience with. We learned a lot about our different working styles and how to work together making all these decisions.

Adding soil amendments and Bed Prep

2009-08-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

Prepping the seed beds.
Watering it in.

Till'n it in

Sprinkling amendments on the beds
We had our soil tested and purchased the recommendations for what to add to our soil. This is us measuring the proper ratios.

Tilling the Beds

2009-08-07T00:50:00.000-07:00

Hottie

Trying to start the damn thing

Preping the Beds Before Rotatiling

2009-08-07T00:45:00.001-07:00

Each bed is 5ft by 40ft and there are 6. We made sure the beds were square, put up string to mark each bed and then cut the edges with a shovel to guide the tiller. Devon helped us on this day.

Compost Bins

2009-08-07T00:33:00.000-07:00

Ben and I made these compost bins using found pallets, cardboard picked up from hardware store, some lumber that had been left by the former tenants and some screws. Ben was the real artist on this project.

Chipping Blackberry Piles, Clearing the Garden area

2009-08-07T00:19:00.000-07:00

Feeding the chipper...watch those fingers.

This shows the brush pile and Ben and I working on the Compost bins.

Below is the yard with the brush piles. You can see the stakes that mark where the beds will be.

Keeping up on the blog was pushed to the bottom of the priority list, but we have been taking pictures. I will try and post them in order that we did them, and then fill in some explanations later.

Here is the day we rented a chipper and got rid of the massive piles of black berries that we cleared.

Three Sisters Garden

2009-06-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

The "Three Sisters" are corn, beans, and summer squash planted together, forming solid, and efficient companion crops. I know that this technique was created and used by Indigenous folks I believe the Iroquois people and probably many others in the North East of this continent. In my research of companion planting it seems that the Three Sisters are becoming popular amongst non native gardeners, to the point that you can even buy "Native American" seed packages with all three seeds. So this wisdom is yet another appropriated idea from Indigenous folks. We will keep this in our awareness as we continue with our garden work.
At least part of the idea behind combining these crops is how they all fit together so well. The corn, which is started first, grows tall and close together. The pole beans are then planted right next to the corn so the beans can climb up the corn stock. The squash is then planted near by these corn bean groups using the ground space to spread out, as squash do.
This is the small area behind the house that is south facing. We decided to use this area to plant some crops that are typically warm weather crops because of the great micro-climate conditions created by the side of the house. The soil here is quite easy to rototill. We added in a 10lbs bag of chicken poop and some alfalfa as we tilled, which adds nitrogen and organic matter as the alfalfa breaks down.

The Chicks Move In...Finally!

2009-06-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

Shea is proud, despite the look on his face.

We finished the tractor and moved the chickens into their new home. The Tractor has open floor for them to graze and chillout during the day safely, and a enclosed coop for them to sleep in at night that is hardcore enough to keep raccoons and skunks out. We know the birds are much happier now. We love having them in the yard too. They are so funny and constantly amaze us that they don't learn anything. Before we started planting our beds, we could just let them run around the whole yard, and they would follow us around, and peck at the ground, and anything matalic they found. Now that we have seedlings in the ground we keep them in the tractor and have made a little corral for them to run around in.

More Chicken Tractor Pics

2009-06-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

We'll put some words to go with these in a while. Things with the blog go slow, because everything else outside goes so fast.

Chicken Tractor Building

2009-06-10T11:07:00.001-07:00

2009-06-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Chicks Got Big...Fast

This is the Chicks just about a month and half after we got them, while frantically working on the chicken tractor.

All of us, especially the poor Chickens were really ready for the move.

Getting Chicks

2009-05-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Our bathroom chick room. When getting young chicks the heat lamp should be close enough to keep it around 90% and move it every week to decrease the temperature 5%.

The chicks eat a mix called chickstart which is a finer consistency than chicken feed or crumble.

A bit of grit goes into the chickstart to aid the digestion of the chicks. Apparently this is less necessary if you will have free range chickens because they will pick up gravel as they eat.

We also supplemented the water with electrolytes. We put marbles in the water container to prevent the chicks from standing in the water dish. They still did, and pooped in it a lot too but we think it may have helped. Another problem was the bedding getting into the water container and absorbing the water durring the day. The marbles did help with this a bit but still was an issue.

The chicks also liked to sit on top of the feeder which added up to a lot of shit in their food and they didn't seem to like to roost on the apple tree branch that we stuck in there.

Starting a Chicken Tractor

2009-05-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

We used the book "Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil" by Lee and Foreman to help figure out how many chicks to get and some of the design elements that we wouldn't really know how to guess about. For example, we figured out that how much square footage each chicken needed for the roosting space, safe sleeping space and for the open floored tractor. Most of the jokes in this book are as cheesy as the illustrations inside.

We have 11 chicks. 8 Golden Laced Wyanndottes, 2 Long Crowers, and then there is Dominique.

They started out just about the size of a fist. They are all soft and make cute little peeping noises. We made a nice bed for them in the small bathroom.

Soon they were double the size and ten times the mess, ate lots too.

Finally we sat down to design our chickens tractor.

Welcome

2009-05-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

We are posting this blog to document the progress of our garden project. Add your own suggestions or comments.