March 26, 2015

Good morning,I have wondered how the pioneers fed their chickens before pellets. The noted site below is an interesting web site that addresses this issue.

 

http://theprepperproject.com/feeding-chickens-without-buying-feed

 

 It is just as interesting that most sites I have seen that address this issue are located in wetter climes. Similar to what I have found with veggie gardening. This does add a curious twist to it. It would be interesting to see “The Mother Earth News” do an article on West Texas Arid homesteading.

 

The summer time, especially if we get a wet season, free range feeding the chickens becomes a lot easier. Chickens are omnivores and will eat just about anything you throw at them. I have seen them eat anything that runs, walks, crawls, or is just lying there. This includes animal or vegetable. I sometimes laugh when I see chicken food that sells itself as vegetarian. Chickens will only be vegetarian if they are permanently enclosed inside. Chickens are opportunists.

 

What I have found is that you need to feed chicken carbohydrates and protein. The carbs are an easy issue. Mangles which are oversized beets have traditionally been grown for livestock feed. In milder climates, like ours they can be harvested throughout the winter. I have fed beets to my birds and they love them. Another large root crop is turnips. An interesting note with turnips, the leaves contain around 18 % protein and the roots have about 12%. Of course they would also contain carbs too. I choose mangles and turnips because their roots can get to be upwards of 20 pounds. Several birds could eat on one root.

 

 The above mentioned website addresses all sources of protein. I will address vegetable sources. I have tried to feed the chicken’s alfalfa pellets for winter protein and they look at me as to say “do what”. I have not gotten them to eat alfalfa pellets, but this would also encourage a need to purchase food if they would. One time I purchased an alfalfa hay bale to mulch with in the garden and the girls went ape over the stuff. So I decided to look at growing legumes for forage. Two examples are alfalfa and clover.

 

When we were prepping the guineas to be free range, we had planted their run to New Zealand white clover. I have also used this crop as a cover crop in the garden to increase nitrogen (protein) levels in the garden. This is a vigorous grower and stays short, up to 18 inches.

I searched the net and found this site that deals with cover crops and forage.

 

http://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/Books/Managing-Cover-Crops-Profitably-3rd-Edition/Text-Version/Legume-Cover-Crops/White-Clover

 

White clover (New Zealand clover) as a forage provides a 28 % protein crop. This could very easily provide my protein source. With ruminants this causes a bloat risk, not so with chickens.

The roots could be planted in one 45 foot long bed. The clover could either be a mown cover crop bed or plant accessible areas of clover in the barnyard. I could rotate through these areas and let one rehab while feeding from another. I suspect that I could not completely feed my hens without augmenting with pellets.

 

We may have to give this a whirl.

 

It is so nice to finally be getting nice warm weather. It has been difficult to mature succession crops and I have been harvesting my over wintered mature crops. These are beginning to be sparse. With this warmer weather I am hoping that there will not be any veggie scarcity. Please place your orders for your desired veggies and I will do my best to fill all orders.. Veggie transitions from winter to summer can be tricky. In the event that I cannot completely fill orders I will only bill for the portion I do fill. Thank you for your patience.

March 19, 2015

Good morning, gotta love learning curves. I am a big proponent of saving seeds. Last year I was running low on a couple of my tomato varieties so I decided to hold back a few fruits of these desired plants. Before I did this my tom bed had been infected with western curling disease. This disease was introduced into this bed by leaf hoppers. Western curling disease is a virus.

Well I may be slow but eventually I do arrive. For some reason one morning I was thinking of GMO's. GMO's are created with the splicing of some DNA from one source to another organism that is not even closely related. The chance of this splicing happening naturally would be worse odds than winning one of the huge lottery prizes. It just is not going to happen!! From what I gather this gene is spliced into the host cell by the use of a virus. This virus is very evident in this “new” organism and is how it is traced as a GMO.

How does this relate to the seed saving problem?

It is evident that my seeds were infected with the western curling disease when I started to grow seedlings this year. I did not see this in my Oregon Spring or my Long Keeper seeds. These seeds were saved in 2012 and 2013 respectively. These have grown really quite nicely. The Pink Eggs and New Yorkers are a different story. These seeds were taken from an infected bed.

Even though the fruit and the plants looked to be good specimens to harvest seed from, they must have been infected and not displaying the symptoms yet. The symptoms are found in the ( love these words) apical meristem (the growing point of a plant) and the plant begins to curl and become quite convoluted. Eventually the plant dies and if it has not been rouged out can potentially infect the rest of the plantings. Potentially is mild, NO it WILL infect the rest of the bed.

One of my first thoughts when I saw the curling was that some how the seedlings had been sprayed with an herbicide. The seedlings had never been out of the house!!

I have not had Western curling disease for several years. The year that I first observed the disease was back when I was not using fabric so universally in the garden. I am not sure what made last year such a banner year for the curling disease but it was. The fabric is possibly the only defense there is against this disease. The idea is to prevent the leaf hoppers from chewing on the plant and the only way to do that is to prevent the insect from having plant contact. A beneficial insect or a spray can take out the infected insect but if that insect chews on the plant before it is nuked, the damage is done.

So the moral of the story is: not only does the selected plant to save seeds from, needs to be a typical specimen of that variety, but also there must not be any signs of obvious maladies within the bed. Because the the malady could be a virus. Virus's can affect clean down to the building blocks of the plant. What an amazing lesson to have learned!!

Yes I am seeing some more signs of spring. The spring bird chorus is in full swing, noticed some willows budding out and soon the cottonwoods. Most of my beans are up, zukes and crooknecks, are up along with some butternuts. The lettuce replacements are up, and have started to out plant chili's , eggplants and toms. Of course I have the heavy fabric by the bed in case Mom Nature has another hissy fit. We can hope that spring has arrived!!!

March 12, 2015

Good morning, recently during one of our intermittent warming days before it was rudely interrupted by the next several cold days. I managed to putter around in the garden. Amazing as it was the soil was not toooo wet just only too wet. Emphasis on the number of “o's”. Something that I have observed is that we have really gotten some very deep chilling in the soil. This is due to all the melting ice we have gotten this year. In years past I have dug down 6 to 8 inches and a thermometer would read in the low to mid 50's.

Last fall when I buried some sweet potato fingerlings, I thought I was being cautious and buried them at 8 to 10 inches. For funzzies I thought I would dig down to the sweets and see how they were doing. I did not expect to see any sprouting but I really did not expect what I found. Granted I only dug up a portion (about 1/4) of this “seed bed” but about half of what I found looked to have suffered from too cold of storage conditions. Sweet storage is from 55 to 60 with 80 percent humidity. I wish I had a thermometer in the garden that day just to see how cool it was at that depth. I am sure that the soil temp was less than 50 degrees. How much below I do not know. Anyway more than half of what I examined looked like they were soft and once the soil temperature rises they will most likely rot. I do have one other bed that I have not checked on. This one is in one of the beds that I covered with greenhouse film and Agribon 70.

A side track observation deals with the chard and kale in this bed. Unlike the more traditionally covered chard /kale there was never any stem freeze cracks, which indicates that it was warmer in the greenhouse film/fabric bed. Soon I am going to take a look at the condition of these tubers.

I had mentioned that I had also started some sweet cuttings. Oh, more learning curve. I was afraid if I had them growing in the house all winter that they would be way out of control with growth. Looking back this would not have been a problem. As it stands I should get enough cuttings for one bed but not for the 3 beds. Each bed needs about 130 rooted cuttings.

Next year I will do things differently.. First for the mini tubers I will layer in sand inside a Styrofoam cooler with a top and put it under the house or in the coolest room in the house. And for the plants to make cuttings, Deb says she would be glad to have a sweet vine that could grow around her window at work. This plant would be several feet long and would make a lot of cuttings, and this vine would grow again.

I also mentioned that I had planted some small seed potatoes back in the the middle of November. Due to the exceptionally long extended warm fall we experienced up to Christmas, they had sprouted and emerged. I figured they would get burnt back and they did. I am finding as they reemerge that these will be very good sized plants with lots of nodes to produce potatoes. Time will tell once they are harvested whether this was a good thing or not.

Funny like sweet potatoes you can have all this wonderful thick full tops and think “boy howdy those vines have got to be loaded with spuds.” It was a few years back and a pocket gofer got into my Irish potato bed and destroyed it. Then proceeded to reek havoc in my sun choke bed. I drew the line at the sun choke bed and took him out. All the time thinking I saved the sweet bed that was right next to the sun chokes. The tops were wonderful and full. Well at harvest time there was a 10 foot section of the bed that was devoid of tubes. Thinking this strange until I got up to a nice sized lunker. Maybe what was a 3 to 4 pound tuber until I got to the other end that was more or less buried. It reminded me of the Giant sequoia that has the tunnel to drive a car through, only pocket gofer sized. This is a problem for those crops that are not visible.

My concern with the Irish spuds is with the top die back, all of the potato nodes could be near the surface. This would limit the size of the harvest and potentially green the spuds because they are too shallow. I will need to check on these guys later. I might need to do some soil hilling around the potato tops.

I still like the fall Irish potato planting but maybe I may need to delay the planting into December. Gotta love trial and error.

It does appear that the long term weather forecast is predicted to be a slow warming trend. This would be good so that crops that have been sitting and not maturing due to the ice and snow will mature to be harvested. Just maybe there is hope for my sugar pod peas yet. They have been blooming but with the cold the blossoms have dropped off instead of making peas. I hope that everything comes together and there is not a slow down in the garden.

I have started a new chard / kale bed because with all the chill this winter I expect for the old bed to start going to seed and I am seeing flowers starting to develop on the kale. Worst thing that can happen is that there may be a short lull in the harvest. The days are getting longer , now all we need is some warmth. I needed to raise the covers over a portion of my Royal Burgundy bean bed because I am getting emergence of beans. I am amazed at how cool the conditions have been and these guys germinated.

Maybe oh just maybe spring has sprung!!

March 5, 2015

Good morning, This really is one weird year, especially considering how this winter has gone. Since starting my garden in July of 2003, this year has thrown all of the rules out the window. That is weather wise.

Every year there has been a trend for warmer weather once we have reached the middle of February. This has not been the case this year. We have gotten days where it is really quite warm and I feel I am starting to get some solar gain in the soil and then along comes another ice or snow storm.

Take this first week of March for example: Sunday was near 70 but just prior to that were several cold days with ice. Then came a few warm days. As I write this on Wednesday morning, NOAA is showing snow showers Wednesday night but underground is showing just rain. ( Thursday morning ice on the windshields) Rain would really help at warming the soil. Sadly Any of the warm solarizing days have lost their gains with each of the frozen precipitation storms. On Sunday an uncovered bed was 40 degrees at 3 inches and a plastic filmed bed was 50. I really would like to see 50 in the uncovered bed. This would give me some overnight chill security. I can sit back and watch the weather a little bit, the seedlings are not getting to root bound at this date. But that time is approaching.

I need some “banked “ soil warmth to carry the seedlings through the night. Fabric is good for holding heat but does not generate warmth. I just do not think the averages are in my favor. I have many weeks vested in my seedlings, and I won't gamble on something that I am not reasonably sure of.

Presently I have potatoes that I planted last fall starting to come up. Potatoes can take cooler weather but not freezing. Once we have some soil warmth, the potatoes should be able to go through our cool mornings with a couple of layers of 19. I have 3 layers of 70 (a bit gun shy) over them and they seem to be doing fine. Although they have not out grown their good case of frost bite that they received. A few days of warming should kick them into gear. Their sluggish growth also gives credibility to my wait and see stance.

I am getting some of my replacement seedling to come up after the caterpillars clear cut them. Lettuce carrots, beets and radishes can germinate in forty degree soil. Especially with fabric covers. Monday this week I checked my lettuce seedlings (they were looking nice) but was unable to get into the garden on Tuesday. On Wednesday I caught a cut worm as it had just finished the last of my lettuce seedlings. It is because of this cooler weather that seedlings are not growing fast enough to get through their vulnerable stage. Just need to be more vigilant and provide more protection.

All of my greens are doing fine with this flippant weather. The last spell of warmer weather I did sow some beans and found that they had started to germinate before this go around. I am curious to see how they are doing on Friday. My experience with royal burgundy beans has been that they will germinate and grow in cooler soils. I have an abundance of some of my summer veggie seeds, I may have to try sowing some. The worst thing that could happen is they do not come up. But if they do? Shoot I might as well see if I can push the season. I am getting a bit stir crazy sitting on my hands.

I hope for a nice steady and gradual warming with no more of this frozen stuff. Well at any rate this too will pass! I am grateful for a very patient wife!!