Chickens

No, we don't live on a farm.  Someone asked me that yesterday and my answer was no.  We do live on about 3.5 acres, so there is room to do more than some homeowners. 

We have 10 laying chickens right now, but Ashley's (granddaughter) class is hatching eggs that will become ours next week.  We have 2 black australorps, 1 gold lace wyandotte, 4 silver lace wyandottes and 3 red sex-link chickens.  The red sex-link were given (with a coop) to us by a friend who didn't want chickens over the winter.  The other seven chickens were from a batch of chicks that Brent (brother) ordered last summer.  We lost one chicken last fall to our neighbor's dog and a hawk tried unsuccessfully to grab one a few weeks ago. 

I tried to take a picture to show the difference in the size of the eggs.  The large darker egg is from the sex-link.  They are stronger layers than the other birds.  The other birds win the prize for beauty though.  So we have both - beauty and brawn!

To till or not to till that is the question

Why do we do what we do? When did the idea of pulverizing the ground became the accepted way of farming?  The answer brings us all the way back to 1700 and Jethro Tull (not the band, even though they took their name from the Jethro Tull I will tell you about.)

Jethro Tull and his contemporaries believed that matter was composed of four elements— earth, air, fire, and water—and Tull extrapolated that plants assimilated nutrients by combining the elements.  Jethro Tull believed that plants had tiny mouths on their roots which ate the foods in the soil. He thought plants absorbed and digested fine particles of earth, then discharged waste into the atmosphere. He called roots the stomach and intestines of plants; their leaves were lungs, and sap was blood. He did not think water formed any part of the food for plants.

Tull had seen firsthand the importance of cultivation when he had visited the vineyards of France and Italy. The loosened soil permitted air and moisture to reach the roots of growing plants. Apparently, Tull thought that perhaps loose soil fit better in the plants' mouths. Manures, Tull thought, helped feed plants because they assisted with the breakdown of earth particles. But he also thought manures affected the taste and composition of food and promoted weed growth. He advocated instead pulverizing the soil, planting with drills, and thorough tilling during the growing period to promote production.

Up to that point in history, fields were sown by broadcasting seeds over the ground.  Both the seeds and the weeds grew. It was almost impossible to control weeds in a field where seeds were scattered so freely.  Tull started experimenting with sowing in rows and could hoe weeds without disturbing the crop.  Production rose dramatically and his methods were gradually adopted.

The same methods that brought about a significant rise in yields also unleashed it's own set of problems such as erosion and an ever increasing dependence on fossil fuels to produce crops.  Just as Jethro Tull revolutionized agriculture in 1700, scientists are now understanding more completely how plants grow and the role bacteria, fungi, nematodes, arthropods, etc. have in a healthy soil.

Back to the original question, to till or not to till?  The consensus from soil scientists is that tilling can be done to break up sod.  You get one chance to use a rototiller.  After that, your garden should be laid out in planting areas and walking areas.  Make sure that you can reach the entire bed or row from the walking area.  To keep weeds in check and moisture in the soil, mulch.  I have come to realize that no matter how beautiful we think pulverized ground looks, it is only a superficial beauty.  My picture of a beautiful garden now includes finding worms as I plant. 

I think that I need a good epitaph for my rototiller -
And I will give you rest.

Soil Biology 101

It helps to understand that there is a food chain that occurs under the ground equivalent to the food chain that exists above the ground. This may be more technical than interests most gardeners but it is important to know what happens in the soil to make it a healthy soil community.  Since I am not a biology major, I will quote from a book that does a good job of explaining the soil food web in simple terms.  The book is "Teaming with Microbes" by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis.

"The typical gardener knows very little about soil and why it matters."  (That is about to change if you bear with me.)  "After all, an acre of good garden soil teems with life, containing several pounds of small mammals, 133 pounds of protozoa, 900 pounds each of earthworms, arthropods, and algae; 2000 pounds of bacteria; and 2400 pounds of fungi."  (And I thought it was just dirt.)

"Most gardeners think of plants as only taking up nutrients through root systems and feeding the leaves.  Few realize that a great deal of the energy that results from photosynthesis in the leaves is actually used by plants to produce chemicals they secrete through their roots.  These secretions are known as exudates.  A good analogy is perspiration, a human's exudate.

Root exudates are in the form of carbohydrates (including sugars) and proteins.  Amazingly, their presence wakes up, attracts, and grows specific beneficial bacteria and fungi living in the soil that subsist on the exudates and the cellular material sloughed off as the plant's root tips grow.  All this secretion of exudates and sloughing -off of cells takes place in the rhizosphere, a zone immediately around the roots, extending out about a tenth of an inch.  The rhizosphere contains a constantly changing mix of soil organisms, including bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozoa, and even larger organisms. 

Plants control the food web for their own benefit, an amazing fact that is too little understood and surely not appreciated by gardeners who are constantly interfering with Nature's system.  Studies indicate that individual plants can control the numbers and the different kinds of fungi and bacteria attracted to the rhizosphere by the exudates they produce.  During different times of the growing season, populations of rhizosphere bacteria and fungi wax and wane, depending on the nutrient needs of the plant and the exudates it produces.

Soil bacteria and fungi are like small bags of fertilizer, retaining in their bodies nitrogen and other nutrients they gain from root exudates and other organic matter.  Carrying on the analogy, soil protozoa and nematodes act as "fertilizer spreaders" by releasing the nutrients locked up in the bacteria and fungi "fertilizer bags."  The nematodes and protozoa in the soil come along and eat the bacteria and fungi in the rhizophere.  They digest what they need to survive and excrete excess carbon and other nutrients as waste.

Left to their own devices, then, plants produce exudates that attract fungi and bacteria; their survival depends on the interplay between these microbes.  Soil life provides the nutrients needed for plant life, and plants initiate and fuel the cycle by producing exudates."

Why does this matter?  I think that it is important to know how the soil food web works to understand what happens when we destroy parts of the web.  That is why we have bins of worms and piles of leaves, manure and coffee grounds.  Our goal is to help people create healthy soil not only for our benefit but most of all, for the benefit of our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren.

I will keep adding more soil information under Soil 101.

Where is Spring?

We woke up this morning to another coating of snow and ice on the ground.  After reaching 70 degrees 10 days ago, we have been back to winter weather. 

During our brief "heat wave", I was able to plant the peas that I had sprouted, spinach and swiss chard.   I covered the plants with row cover cloth but it wasn't anchored properly and some of it blew off.  The plants were frosted a little.  Luckily everything that was in the ground can tolerate frost, so they are reviving. 

This past weekend, we fashioned our row cover hoops.  We used 1/2" pvc pipe and molded the pipe around a form using a heat gun.  The hoops are placed over rebar that was hammered into the ground.  The clips on the hoops are 1" binder clips from Staples.

I planted onions and lettuce after the hoops were up.  Today I planted about a dozen broccoli plants that I started and sowed more peas directly into the ground.  I am going to sow more peas directly when those seeds are up about 2 inches.  The peas were the first seeds that I planted directly in the ground but I will sow radishes this week.  As soon as we are back to normal temps (50's) I will be busy planting more spring vegetables. 

I started tomatoes, peppers and more flower seeds last week.  Check out the list of plants that are started on the Plants page.

Creating a New Garden

Starting a layered bed was the task tackled on Saturday.

We had to move our garden because of continual flooding.  It was a depressing idea when we discussed it last fall after another flood washed out our garden again.  I know that it is a job that has to be done, but it is still a bit overwhelming.  We just started a new asparagus bed last year and our garden was in the second year of no tilling.  The soil was really nice to work with and the weeding was incredibly easy.  It is hard to start all over again.  I prepped three new rows last fall but that is only one quarter of the size of our old garden.

We created the fourth row by using the layered approach.  The first layer is cardboard laid on the grass and soaked.

The second layer is compost that was mixed last year.





The third layer is rotted horse manure from my sister-in-law Tracy's horses.  The fourth layer is shredded leaves from last fall.  We then added a thin layer of coffee grounds and finished it off with another layer of compost.  Each layer was wet before the next layer was added.

We decided to cover the entire row to allow it to heat faster and decompose.  My plan is to plant in it by the end of May. 

You can see from the pictures that we also have decided to leave grass in the walking paths.  I am hoping that this is a good decision, but time will tell.  We are starting with 3' wide rows and 3' wide walking paths.  I have a feeling that the rows will grow with time so I wanted to start with a wide walking path.

March 7, 2011

Welcome to LandIS Alive.

Warmer days are teasing me.  Plans for the gardens are always optimistic this time of year.  Seeds are being sown inside and life is starting to emerge outside.

Jerry fabricated a great seed starting cart.  The seeds are being started with 2 parts pro-mix and 1 part vermicompost.











lettuce

 

The worms are busy chomping through the compost.  The compost is a mixture of shredded leaves, horse manure and coffee grounds.  So far everything is free and the worms work 24/7!  They are the

best employees - they never complain and all we do is feed them discarded waste.  They work through the compost and leave behind what gardeners call black gold.  Their castings help soil to retain

water and help roots take up the nutrients that are in the soil.



worms



worm bins



 







I will be adding vermicompost to my soil as I plant the seedlings outside.  Keep watching for updates as the weather warms up.  My goal is to have peas sprouted and in the ground by March 15.  My spinach, lettuce and onions will also go in the ground in March.  I will also try some spring broccoli, though I know it will do better in the fall.