Greetings fellow carbon units!

I thought I would give you a quick update on my dwarf fruit trees.  If you will recall, I planted a peach tree, an apple tree and a plum tree last fall.  I also had a couple of fig trees, but in order to not keep you in suspense, I can tell you right now that they did not make it through the winter.  I'm going to try again with them at a later time.

Getting back to the three fruit trees.  Well... I ended up buying another apple tree, peach tree, apricot tree and a nectarine tree.  That's a lot of trees to cram into one tiny backyard, but I managed.  Besides, they're dwarf and won't get too big, as long as I keep them under control.

As for varieties - well, the peaches are Intrepid and Elberta.  I grew up in Tucson and have fond memories of picking Elberta peaches in the hot sun and biting into them, right there in the orchard. The sweet sticky peach juice usually ended up all over my face and shirt, but man was it worth it.

Intrepid  Peach

The apples are a Honey crisp spin off and an Cox;s Orange Pippin.  The Cox's Orange is an old variety and it is the only one that isn't a dwarf, but I haz plans for that one.  I intend on trellising it against the fence, but we'll see how that goes.  It is supposed to be a good all purpose apple and one that is used in a lot of the hybrid crosses we have today.  It is also supposed to be a good cider apple, and I lurve me some cider, I will tell you.

I don't remember what the apricot, the plum or the nectarine varieties are, but I'm looking forward to them fruiting in the next few years.  Apricot jam, might just be my favorite.

Apricot Tree

At any rate, they all made it through the winter with flying colors and are growing with astounding amounts of vigor.  I will do some summer pruning at the end of next month just so they don't get too big or leggy.  My goal is to have nice sturdy trees that can withstand a fruit load easily.

Now the next garden addition is pretty sweet and I've been enjoying the heck out of them.  Meet Susan Beak Eggthany and Mo Clucker.  Suzie is the dark red one and Mo, is the one with the whiter feathers around her neck.  They are about 10 months old and have been popping out an egg a day each since mid-January.

They're quiet, well behaved, love eating bugs and they eat the heck out of the dandelions!  Also, Mo has a serious thing for strawberries, so I'm always shooing her out of the strawberry bed. She was too fast for me here and played keep away with Suzie while gobbling up her ill gotten gains.

Chickens are a natural for any garden - free manure and it's supposed to be the best manure ever once you let it compost some.  Plus, can I tell you?  They have huge personalities!  Who knew?

They come running when I shake their treat bag and always follow me around checking out what I am doing and making sure I do it correctly.  They make this funny sorta soft clucky noise when they see me and I have just been having the best time.

Here, I was trying to get a picture of an intriguing weed.  Ran right over to investigate right as I was taking the picture.

The very best part is the fresh eggs.  You seriously have never baked something before if you have not used a fresh, laid 15 minutes ago egg.  Fluffy, light as air baked goods.  Did you know that most of the eggs you buy in the grocery store are about 3-6 months old when you buy them?  There really is no comparison at all.

Now, I am sure someone is going to ask, but the answer is "no."  You do NOT need a rooster in order to get eggs.  You need a rooster if you want fertilized eggs.   Just as a human woman produces an egg every month regardless of whether a man is present or not, so do hens.

I really think that if more people knew how fun and easy chickens are, more people would have them.

Okay, well, that's about it.  Until next time, please remember, Be Kind To Each Other.

With Silver Bells and Cockle Shells...

Hello gentle readers,

Know what is gross?  Potato bug larvae.  So very, very gross.  They are slimy and squishy too.  Which is good, because it makes picking them off of potato plants and disposing of them easier.  But... shudder.  blech.

If you have been reading my blog - first off, that makes you ultra cool - but secondly, you may recall that last year, I started building permaculture beds and taking steps to create a little "food forest" in my urban backyard.

I started by creating some sheet mulched beds with lots of good stuff.  So far, the results are pretty good.  My strawberries have been pumping out 2 to 3 berries every day.  Certainly, not enough to make jam, but they are tasty.  This is their first spring in the ground, so I imagine they are still getting established and hopefully, I will get a decent crop next year.

(Aren't my nails FABulous??  They're my new favorite obsession, Jamberry nail wraps.  These are Mermaid Tails mixed up with some regular old nail polish on the rest of my fingers.)

Secondly, the apple tree... I'm so happy with it this year.  It still needs a ton of pruning and shaping, but so far, there is no sign of scab on the leaves or the apples.  I also thinned the apples I can reach and maybe it is my imagination, but the remaining ones look so much bigger already!

This is my little salad garden.  Things that are doing well:  lettuce (two varieties) and the carrots look promising.  Also, I planted some dragon tongue beans along the back.  'cause... dragon's tongue... coolest name ever.  They're doing pretty well.

Things that aren't:  The collards are doing well but I'm sharing my harvest with cabbage moths; same with the cabbage; the kale; and the brussels sprouts.  I probably should have used row covers.  Next time.

Along the side of the house, in the driveway, I started a container garden and almost everything is looking really great although I have nary a bloom on a tomato plant yet.  I planted:  potatoes; sweet potatoes; tomatoes; peppers; squash; cucumbers; watermelon; and winter squash.  Most of them are in these new-fangled plant pouches which are supposed to be way better for the plants and prevent root bound problems.  So far I like them, but I am concerned they are not quite large enough for the potatoes.

Speaking of potatoes, I may have gone a bit overboard when I ordered the seed potatoes last year.  I have 17 pots of potatoes.  Apparently, I forgot I didn't live on a farm.

Alright you guys, that's about it for today.  Next time, I will show you how the dwarf fruit trees are doing, plus a little introduction to my new weed and bug control system.

Until then... remember -  Be kind to each other.

Doh!

Why have I never thought to plant strawberries before?  Little red nuggets of mouth watering deliciousness, sun warmed sweetness... mmmmmmmm....
It makes perfect sense that I do plant them, since I generally make strawberry jam every year.

Strawberry Jam Canned in One of My Vintage Ball Jars

Most years I make strawberry shortcake from scratch and serve it with real whippy cream, 'cause seriously nothin' says summer quite like that to me.

Homemade Strawberry Shortcake

So why, oh why would it never occur to me to actually plant my own?  Who knows.  The important thing is that today I have taken steps to remedy that situation.  I bought 20 bare root strawberry plants.  There are enough growing days left to get them established this fall and actually harvest a few next summer.

Here's something I didn't know.  There are two different types of strawberries - June bearing and ever bearing.  Why decide?  Get some of both.  Yes, have some.  The names sort of tell you what you need to know.  June bearing have one big crop, usually in June of the second year after planting and the ever bearing varieties bear fruit all summer, beginning with the first year after planting.

I can't wait to get them and plant them so I can get those tasty little morsels of summer next year!  I think I may have just the bed for them.... 

NOM NOM NOM!

Another bed and some ideas for next Spring

I've wanted to get back out in the backyard last week, but laboring in a sauna is not something I was willing to do, so I did other things this week.  Mostly sitting on the couch looking up stuff on the internet.  Productive stuff.  No, really.  It was.  Scout's honor.

See, I found this youtube channel by a guy named  Larry Hall.  Basically, you take some vinyl rain gutters and some two by fours, some containers, net cups and some potting mix and you create a self-watering system in which you can grow amazing vegetables in containers.  Since I have an entire driveway that extends all the way into my backyard that gets sun all day long, I've wanted to do a container garden there forever.  These are cool, because it will eliminate me having to water those containers to keep everything alive.  The nutrients go right into the water, which is pretty efficient, sort of borrowing from hydroponics.  I'd probably use compost tea in mine, as I don't want to use chemical fertilizer.  The other thing is that here where I live, I would have to take steps to prevent creating a mosquito breeding ground.  Still, I love the idea - it's simple as can be, inexpensive and I can use grow bags, which are better than buckets or plastic totes since the roots self-prune instead going round and round and eventually killing the plants.

Then, in my travels, I found this guy.  Another thing I've wanted to do again is to grow potatoes in containers.  Besides having a great accent, I love what he is doing with the potatoes, even if he does use chemical fertilizers.  That's easy enough to bypass and again, watering with compost tea would work wonders.  So again, I'm filing this away for next year and in fact, I think I would combine the two ideas and grow potatoes with the rain gutter self-watering system.  I wish I found this in the spring, because I would have done it this year, but oh well.  The possibilities for next season abound!

In the meantime, I decided to start another permaculture-type garden bed with sheet mulching.  I surveyed the backyard this morning and narrowed down two possible sites.

The first site is near the fence and at the moment is a tangle of pachysandra, ivy and thistles.  Probably a few dandelions there too.  You can see the last of the phlox flowering and there is a rose bush struggling to the left.  Sterling, I think.  It doesn't get sun in the morning, because its close to the back steps of the house, but I knew I wanted to put one of the fruit trees I've ordered there.  Possibly the apple, since it would be fairly close to my existing apple tree and cross-pollination, ya know.



The second site gets a good amount of sun every day and would be a great place for tomatoes, peppers and possibly another fruit tree.  Right now, there is a type of perennial sunflower/daisy thingy I purchased at Fordhooks on a whim and it is much, much too big for that space.  I keep it cut back, but if I didn't, it would get over 8 feet tall.  This is actually what grew back after I dug it up and replanted it toward the back of the yard where the size made sense.  So, yeah... this one is going to have to go.

After mulling over both possible sites for the new bed, I ended up choosing the first one for a very simple reason.  (and this is where my youngest daughter should stop reading)  Bees.  Those yellow flowers are a bee/moth/butterfly magnet and I figured I would give them a few more weeks of luscious pollen before tackling this bed.

Decision made, I hauled out the weed whacker and discovered several new curse word combinations.  I hate that darn thing.  It's inexpensive (cheap) and the strings don't advance automatically like they are supposed to and most of the time, whirl back onto the spool.  

At any rate, a short vocabulary building exercise time later I had this

Chop and drop.  

I spread some newspapers I purchased this morning (I should have read them first, I suppose), wet them down and added a layer of cow manure and wet that down too.

Then I mixed a five gallon bucket of my compost with ten gallons of peat moss, about 3 gallons of vermiculite, two big handfuls of pulverized lime and a handful of Epsom salts.  

I spread half of that mixture over the manure, wet it down, then another layer of manure and topped that off with the remaining soil mixture, wetting each layer down.  Once I got that smoothed out to my liking, I spread a layer of pine shavings over the whole thing and gave it a good soaking.  

Here's the finished bed.  I would like to get another couple inches of pine shavings on top before winter hits, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.  No digging is always a good thing.  Time will tell whether or not the pachysandra and ivy actually succumb to this method or not.  They may just rear their heads, look in my direction and say, "Thanks for the manure, lady."  I'm also wondering if the poor little rose bush will benefit from this sudden glut of nutrients.  Hope so.

For those of you who may be wondering about the addition of lime and epsom salts, the lime is for the calcium and the salts are for the magnesium, both of which prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes, melons, peppers, etc.  It's not enough to neutralize the acid that the manure adds, but will make a difference to the plants.  The peat moss and vermiculite were added because I have a fairly dense clay soil and I wanted to aid in drainage, especially at this particular bed site, since it sits pretty close to my downspout.  

After everything was said and done, I weed whacked the walk again and then decided to take a few pics of my backyard as it is now to share with all of you, plus one of the tree well bed I finished a couple of weeks ago.

New bed and walkway  

Coral Bells in flower

Creeping Charlie.  Someday, I'll make beer with it.

Bed I did a couple of weeks ago.  I ended up planting Russian sage, lavender, Greek oregano and English thyme on this side.  The other side is all seeded with garlic, which has not made an appearance yet.

Well, gentle readers... that is as they say, that.  At least for now.