Chicken update

I had some straw that was wet but not yet moldy, and used it as bedding in the chicken coop. After a few weeks of scratching and mixing with chicken poop, it turned into wonderful soil.

I bought an egg skelter at Pollinate because it looks nicer on my counter top than stacks of cartons.

The Easter Egger/Ameraucana is going to be processed for the soup pot on Friday. She never resumed laying after the winter break. My chickens are livestock rather than pets, so they have to go if they're not pulling their weight.

The Ameraucana is the one in front.

Spring!

The first ripe strawberry of the year was, of course, delicious!

I got a good spinach harvest before the plants started bolting.

I purchased ladybugs to help control the aphid population. I was happy to see them still hanging around and copulating for the next few days.

I digitized a ton of old client files and am in the process of shredding the paper and adding it to the worm bins.

Plus I finally harvested the one bin that was full of worm castings (and a small number of sticks). I still have 3 bins going.

Coop upgrades

The 100 foot extension cord is still stretched across the yard to the chicken run, which is handy for making quick little upgrades like this latch to hold the door open. (We'd previously been using a large rock to prop it open.)

At some point I should invest in a power saw, but my cheap handsaw was enough to cut through this plastic trellis I picked up at Urban Ore.

I used it to fence off the corner of the run where I dump used chicken bedding. The girls had of course been scratching in it and spreading it all around. Keeping it in a pile will help it heat up and decompose more quickly.

The Ameraucana seems to have been playing a prank and laid a half-sized egg last week, followed the next day by a quarter-sized egg. The third day's egg was back to normal. I'm told that this just happens sometimes with young hens.

Urban Farm Tours in Hayward

The Institute of Urban Homesteading branched out the popular Urban Farm Tours to Hayward this fall. This was my first time attending a tour. I wanted to see how different people made use of small spaces (though some of the properties were multiple acres), and how the techniques I'd read about really looked when put into practice. Here are pictures of some of the things I wanted to remember for my future homestead:

Homemade greenhouse - wooden frame and plastic walls, plus a real glass door.

Tiny greenhouse made by stretching clear plastic over an existing frame. On the left, a raised bed delineated by extra cinder blocks.

This raised bed took advantage of old bricks.

And this one simply used stones.

Vegetables planted straight into rotting hay (had been left out in rain).

Tarp/plastic making a planter out of a shopping cart. Makes it easy to harvest tubers, and keeps highly invasive plants contained.

Using a shade cloth to grow leafy greens that can't tolerate full California sun.

C-shaped bed maximizes planting area while keeping everything within easy reach (like a keyhole bed).

Another c-shaped bed.

Failed experiment at using old rain gutters as strawberry beds. Cool idea for vertical gardening, but the high surface area allows the soil to dry out too quickly in a dry climate.

Successful trellising of tromboncino squash. These things were HUGE.

There's nothing to show scale here, but these bamboo shoots were at least 10 feet tall. Bamboo tends to be highly invasive, but it does create a great visual barrier, shade, and construction material.

This passionflower vine was growing onto a rope extending across the yard, and starting to make a living curtain. Great visual.

Fences don't have to be expensive, if you use scrap materials.

Sheer height is what's needed for keeping deer out.

A pop of color makes everything look great.

Gates can also be made from bamboo or scrap materials.

Reused outdoor sink.

Composting: top bin for depositing fresh stuff, middle bin for the hot pile in process, and bottom bin for finished black gold.

How cute is this?!

By later afternoon it was chilly and we were surprised by a drizzle. This fire felt SO nice. Even though the Trivalley is in triple digits in the summer, I get cold easily, and an outdoor fire pit would be a nice play to sit by during winters on my future homestead.

Worm bin

I sent a picture of my worm bin to a new homesteading friend.

I pulled back the top layer of fresh food scraps, and a multitude of wriggling worms were right underneath. They are happy worms. I think it's time to set up a new bin and let them finish off all the food scraps in this one.

Soil quality

Most of my prefered garden vegetables are fall, winter, and spring crops (spinach, carrots, radishes, scallions). With the intense heat of summer, my gardening tasks have actually decreased. I got a small harvest of shelling peas (delicious!), but the strawberries have barely grown since I planted them months ago. I think the main culprit is the cheap (in both price and quality) soil I bought. With the quantity that I needed to fill up all my containers, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm (wait for it) paying the price. The "soil" is mostly tiny woodchips.

The carrots did not like it either.
On the bright side, the worms have been very busy eating up everything I put into into their original bin, and it's almost all completely broken down into rich castings. They've also been busy multiplying, so I had plenty of worms to move to a second bin and start the process over. Come fall, I will mix the finished worm castings with some of the woodchippy "soil" and some higher quality new soil, and my next batch of crops should be much happier.

Major garden expansion

I've been busy in the garden during this past week. A second metal x-pen arrived in the mail, enabling me to expand my dog- and cat-proof garden. On the same day, I went to East Bay Nursery and couldn't resist bringing home one of the dwarf fruit trees. I admire the abundance of food a tree can produce, and I realized that putting a dwarf variety in a half-wine barrel was feasible for my small garden. I chose a clementine mandarin tree, which will grow to only ~6 feet tall in this barrel. Should I move to a new home, I can simply transport it with me! (Click on any picture to see a larger version.)

It's in the sunniest spot in the back yard, and I moved the compost/worm bin over to join it.

I know it's a viable tree because there's a wee mandarin growing already!

So after deciding to get this tree, I splurged and bought many more fruit and vegetable plants.

These are four raspberry plants -- the bins are a bit small for them, but I think they'll be happy enough. I'm going to put rows of string between the posts on either side, for the raspberries to climb on. The pale green board is a homemade dog agility teeter, which is no longer needed for Chimera's foundation training. It keeps the dogs from standing on the deck (level with the tops of the bins) and peeing onto the plants.

This is the other half of the deck, where I will put more pea plants (I love fresh peas!) and two cucumbers, when starts are available again. The blue plastic around the posts keeps the cats from climbing up. On the second level you can see a white mass -- that's my succulent garden, covered up from the cold.

Taking a few more steps to the right, it's the newly expanded pen!

From the other side. The two large tubs in front will be used for growing potatoes.

While I was buying bins at Urban Ore, I came across these lovely blue tiles and put them at the entrance to the penned garden.

Immediately on your left: six strawberry plants! Yum!

The pea plants are being directed along the side of the pen as planned. These plants will stay here until they're spent. I'll be seeding new plants to grow by the deck. (Told you I love fresh peas!)

There are three pretty white flowers on one of the plants. The day after I took this picture, I looked underneath this flower and found a teeny tiny seed pod growing!

The dill (in front) and parsley (back) plants are still going strong. These were the first seeds I planted and watched growing in my garden last fall. Sometimes it's hard for me to resist eating an entire plant at once. Perhaps I will have to devote one of my extra bins to more dill and parsley...

Next to them is the spinach bin, then some empty ones which will be planted with scallions (lots and lots of scallions!), carrots, and radishes.

Turn your head and you'll see six lettuce starts. They weren't too happy about being transported from the nursery, but I'm hoping they'll bounce back.

What's this? Non-edible flowers! Foxglove in the back, columbine in the middle, and dwarf lupine in the front. They're a bit scrunched in there. I had six starts of each, so there's a second bin planted in the same way to the right of the raspberry plants.

And finally, another non-edible: a tiny Norfolk Island Pine from the bonsai area.

I am so thankful for the warm climate which allows gardening to continue year-round. Here's hoping 2014 will bring an abundance of fresh food and flowers!