Welcome Dominiques!

Chickens! This summer has been all about chickens. What started out as a fun classroom project hatching six Dominique eggs at school has turned into building a coop and run for six hens and one rooster. The rooster above, Solo, was the one successful hatch out of our six eggs at school. How could we give him away!? This is the reason for not writing here until today, August 1st. A friend of mine raises and is actually a hatchery for Dominiques and BuckEyes, beautiful heritage chickens. She said I should try Dominiques because they are a gentle bird, more so then the BuckEyes. Yet she loves the BuckEyes more. Wiki says that the Domniques came over around the time of the MayFlower or something along those lines. I think they are from Haiti. They are very hardy in cold climates and are good egg layers. After she gave me six eggs and another friend lent me her incubator I set them up in school. 21 days later Solo hatched. We didn't know if she was a girl (hen) or a boy (rooster) but his light color and proud cockadoodledoo yesterday morning as he entered the run confirmed our suspicions. We have spent the summer building brooders, transforming a horse stall in our barn into a coop, and building a run. Who would have thought that it would take so much thought, research, time, and money! But it's six weeks later and all is almost complete. A final window went into the coop last night. Once that's secure and the nest boxes are put in the coop all will be set....for now! Even though I have been gardening all summer, I have always been behind. Behind on planting. Behind on weeding. Behind on mulching. But constantly watering, watering, watering. Never have I ever had to water so much. This is the driest summer I can remember. Now that the coop is done I've finally weeded the entire garden (thank goodness!) and mulched the lower garden. It is raining as I type, thank goodness again, so I'll mulch the remainder this week. Here are some pictures of our summer's project:

Young Chicks in the Brooder

Our Barn

Welcome to the Coop, Barn Entrance

Taking Down Shelves in the Stall

Putting Up a Wall in the coop

View of the Coop and Pop Door to Run

View of the Coop, Human Entrance

The Run in a Covered 3 Sided Extension of the Barn

Back Shot of Run

Solo and The Girls; First Day in the Run There we have it. Our new coop, run, and more chickens. Welcome! More posts to come sharing our building journey, our final touches: roost, nesting boxes, and new window. Only 12 more weeks to eggs! Mary

Time to Start the Peppers and Eggplant

Starting peppers, eggplant, and parsley this weekend. I'm going to do another planting of onions as well. The leeks and shallots are real slow to start but the yellow and red onions are up and I'm trimming them for the first time this morning. Will taste good in our breakfast omelets.
This weekend we are changing my lighting set up a bit and getting more grow lights up. The garden season is here :)

Happy seed starting,
Mary

PS - My friend Rachel is guiding me on the timing of seed starting this year. If you live in the Central Maine area you must keep your eyes out for Zone 4 plants at your local growing center. Those plants are the absolute most hardy perennials in Maine!! And if you're looking for a wholesale supplier of amazing perennials that your customers will drool over contact them! Their names are Rachel and Bill.
They have a Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/zone4perennials?sk=info

You Know You're a Gardener If....

Just had to share; wonderful! And I'm sure many of you will relate.
http://www.nwedible.com/2012/02/you-know-youre-a-veggiegardener-if.html
Enjoy your garden...oh and "gardens make the world clean and fresh" AHS

The 2012 Season Begins with the Starting of Onion Seeds

Getting potting soil ready to plant onions. I'm using Johnny's Seed Starting mix this year. Been using it at school and we love it.

Yesterday I tapped 16 sugar maple trees and today I planted onion seeds. February 20th and I am thinking I should have started them a week ago. I ordered my seeds from FEDCO and I planted 2 types of yellow storage onions, 1 type of red onion, leeks, shallots, and bunching onions. My dilemma is, do I put a heating pad underneath? I've read that heat helps seed starting a lot. So I'm giving it a try. When I Googled onion seed starting I was pleasantly surprised when I was brought to a MOFGA article by Jean English. Here's the article: http://www.mofga.org/Publications/ArticlesforReprinting/StartOnionsFromSeedNow/tabid/1066/Default.aspx

Let's hope for a good garden season. It's been a dry winter and I'm hoping we won't have a dry summer.
Happy Seed Starting,
Mary

Soil Life and Nitrogen Content

Great blog on gardening and this is a great post on soil. The top 3" to be exact and the life that lives there. There is a great chart showing the amount of nitrogen in different organic matter and if it's a fast or slow release. Also links to some "how to grow" cover crops.

http://networkedblogs.com/tj6EV?a=share&ref=nf

Seeds and seed catalogues are arriving! A great one came this weekend: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. This one is new to me but what a catalogue!! And it's free. Go here to view website:
http://rareseeds.com/

In anticipation of the coming season,
Mary

Happy Thanksgiving and Reflections of the Previous Season

...and of course the season coming up.

It snowed up here in Maine the day before Thanksgiving and now, 2 days later, I sit with time on my hands. This is a very unfamiliar feeling. So I come back here to reflect and write those reflections.

Reflection #1) Buy a few Elderberry bushes and plant out back. Take a look at this page http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2007/08/respect-your-el/ and you will see the motivation behind my wanting to plant some more bushes. I have one next to our pool. It has grown OK for years but the past two years it has gone steadily downhill. I don't know why. I finally give in to the need to get new bushes and plant somewhere else. Earlier this fall I had a flu followed by bronchitis which was then followed by a sinus infection. I haven't been that sick in over 15 years. During that time I thought about elderberry and for good reason. Elderberry is said to be very helpful for flu and cold. Make a hot toddy (hot water, juice of a lemon, honey to taste and then some, and a dash of elder berry syrup). Sip throughout your illness. To help you sleep, add a jigger of whiskey to the hot toddy before returning to bed. Sleep and sweat you will!

Reflection #2) Take more time in the planning and designing stage of the garden. Last year and to be honest, every year, I just plant until I run out of room. How silly of me. A veteran gardener and I still make that #1 mistake. I had plants in my garden that my family doesn't even like. I was just curious about these heirlooms that I planted them. And they took up a lot of precious space. So, to cure this yearly problem I will get out the graph paper and ruler and plan my garden. I'll begin before I order seeds and I will take into account what I can logically harvest, preserve, and share. I'm actually looking forward to mapping next years garden. First I need to make a map of this past seasons so I can be sure to rotate. I usually do map out my garden beds as I'm planting but didn't even do that last year. I'll let you know how this preplanning and designing goes. Watch for a spring time post.

Reflection #3) Preserve more herbs. I let a lot of herbs go by last summer. I used them daily in my cooking but never seemed to take the time to put some by. I now regret that.

Reflection #4) Buy a freezer - There is so much that comes from the garden that can be frozen. Yet due to lack of freezer space I let a lot go by. While we eat a lot and I give a lot away there is still more that can be put up. While I like to can and I do, a freezer would allow me to put up so much more. From summer squash, to green beans that don't make it into my dilly beans, to all the water that is left over from sautéing or steaming veggies, to tomatoes, to fruit....all lovely candidates for the freezer. Buy a freezer.

Reflection #4) Try something new. Last year I tried 2 new varieties of tomatoes, a Russian black tomato and an Italian Heirloom tomato. Both were amazing and will now be staple tomatoes I plant. I also planted some Italian broccoli that I didn't get anything from and the plants were so big! Not sure if it was just the variety or if I somehow managed to have too much nitrogen in my soil (which I highly doubt).

Reflection #5) Plant more onions.

Reflection #6) Try, try, and try again to grow lettuce, spinach, and onion tops throughout the winter months. Figure out the coldframe! The coldframe was great for hardening off plants in the early spring but I really want to figure out how to use it to grow greens throughout the winter months.

Reflection #6) Plant more blueberries.

So that's it for my reflections and goals as of now. I'm sure they will change once I get that map and design going.

Enjoy your garden planning this winter!
Mary

Growing Food Aids the Soul

Wonderful article -

http://www.organicgardening.com/living/food-body-and-soul?page=0,2&cm_mmc=facebook-_-OrganicGardening-_-content-living-_-bodysoul