Chickens earn their keep

This summer I built a chicken tractor. You can read more about that here. 

I built the dimension to be the same width and half the length of our backyard 5'x16' raised garden beds. The 5'x8' tractor fits neatly on top of the sides of the beds.

This allows me to put the lightweight tractor over a bed, and then after stuffing the birds in there (they haven't figured out how to get up into the beds and the tractor on their own) they scratch, poop and generally make a mess of the garden. This is EXACTLY what I want. They till the soil, eat bugs and leftover seeds and plant material.

Asparagus failure

One of three asparagus plants that survived winter.

I think it's important to write about both successes and failures. Well, what are failures if they're not learning experiences? So we'll call it a set back :-)

Last summer Jay and I were very busy in our backyard, and built some raised beds well after the chicken coop was complete, sometime in July.  While I had purchased 20 crowns of asparagus early in the spring, I didn't get around to putting them in the ground until mid-summer. All but a few came up and I diligently packed dirt around the new shoots as they grew out of the soil. I covered the whole thing with hay mulch in autumn and this spring, I waited eagerly for the asparagus to return.

Unfortunately, only three plants returned. I suspect it's because I planted them so darn late in the season, they didn't have enough time to build roots to survive the winter. As I was digging news holes for this year's plants, I uncovered one of the old crowns. Most of it was dead, but you can see below three white roots that seemed to be alive. I wonder had I not dug it up if this would have survived. I found a few other crows too, but they were entirely wilted and starting to rot.

One of last years crowns showing a little bit of life.

Newly dug trench for this year's crowns.

So this year I dug the trenches a little deeper, put a little more compost in the holes, and planted them in May. I'm looking forward to a vibrant asparagus crop for years to come.

A happy new crown, planted deeply, and at the right time of the year!

Bad planning. Big mistake. The conclusion.

Chicken word of the day, Don't count your chickens until they are hatched: proverb cautioning against spending assets until they are in hand.
 
Earlier, I described the events leading up to a meltdown in the shade of an enormous red maple tree.

We had completed two of four 16' x 5' raised beds. They were beautiful—fourteen inches high, full of sandy loamy soil, begging to be planted and covered with compost. They were also in a lot of deep shade for much of the day.

There were two more beds in the works; they had been tilled, paths dug and the first course of the reinforced sides installed. But Jay and I had the wind knocked out of us when we saw our neighbor's red maple shade our beds at three in the afternoon.

Since that maple wasn't going to go anywhere any time soon, we had to look to the east. On the corner of our property, just over the fence, a large three-trunked hackberry tree shaded our garden in the morning through noon. One of the three trunks we have rights to cut down because it leans right over our property line. But the other two trees that we can't touch cast just as much shadow onto our back yard.

We looked up the owner on the city assessor's site, found their name in the white pages, and I called. The property is a three-unit rental and the owners live in a neighboring city. One of the owners answered the phone and I introduced myself as the backyard neighbor of their property on East Washington.

I explained my desire to garden in the back yard, and that I planned to remove the one trunk. But I offered to remove the other two, at my expense, if they would let me. The woman wanted to talk with her husband first. A few days later they returned my call. They had spoken with the tenants who did not want the tree cut down "to maintain privacy."

Tomatoes and peppers are leggy, but have some flowers and fruit.

Even more depressed, weeks went by with two unfinished beds. However, despite the shade, I planted the two completed beds with tomatoes and peppers. It was a dreamy task despite the shade. The beds are tall, the soil loose, and it was fun to dig those plants in. I figure I'll get a few fruit from each plant, but nothing like the productive plants in my community garden where the plants literally get sun from sun up to sun down

The closer bed is now planted in beets, the further will be planted with lettuce.

I finally decided to do something with the other two beds, either rip them out or finish them and plant something in them. I looked up shade-tolerant annual vegetables and found a decent list - lots of lettuce and peas. We also had this huge pile of gravel in our driveway that was supposed to be for the bed paths, and I had no idea what to do with it.

So while on vacation in early July, I hired someone to help me and we finished the paths and moved all that gravel. The beds look great, and I decided to plant some 60-day beets and see what happens. In the shadiest bed, I'll plant lettuce as the summer cools off.

So thanks to folks who commented on my last post. This is an experiment and we'll see what happens.

Hugelkultur - that's not a swear word

The word Hugelkultur, literally translating to “Mound Culture”, is the gardening practice of using excess wood debris in creating giant raised beds. The woody debris (sticks, twigs, logs, etc.) is placed in the base of the raised beds, acting as a sponge, holding in moisture, creating fungal hyphae and also building soil fertility.

I learned about hugelkultur during my permaculture design course. Last year, we had several trees removed from our property along our back fenceline, including an apple, elm and several box elder trees. I asked the tree service to chip all the small branches, but to leave me all the trunks and larger branches with building a hugelkultur bed in mind.

The logs have been sitting in the yard since because I didn't have enough dirt to cover them. But after excavating for our chicken coop run, and also excavating for my raised bed paths, I have enough to create a hugelkultur bed.

I want to keep the bed moderately in place, so I'm using some of the largest logs to reinforce the sides. And I'm using some of the skinniest logs as stakes to hold it all together. This is just about the opposite of the very square, very level, very precise garden beds we are also building in the back of the yard.


Next, I added coffee grounds that I collected this winter on top of the wood. 

Last spring, I collected coffee grounds from local shops for the big orchard sheet mulching project. Then I discovered that Starbucks gives away five pound bags of espresso grounds. No five-gallon buckets and no paper filters flying around the back yard.

Finally, I added soil from a big pile onto the logs.

Hugelkultur beds are best when built tall, and having steep sides so the fungi can get enough oxygen. I don't know how much dirt I have yet, but I'll pile it as high as I'm able. I think I have a lot of excavating to do yet from the raised bed paths.

 


 






The first few years of a hugelkultur bed is its most fertile, so planting heavy feeding plants is best. My plan is to plant asparagus (a heavy feeder) into these beds. As the wood decomposes, the whole thing will sink and I'll have to add manure (again, asparagus is a heavy feeder).

This is a total experiment, we'll see what happens.

Today's poultry phrase: good egg: a regular guy, good-natured person.

CUNA Mutual employee community garden opens

I had the honor and privilege of attending the grand opening ceremony for the CUNA Mutual Group employee community garden on Earth Day, 2014. A couple of years ago, a few very enthusiastic employees from CUNA Mutual visited our employee community garden at American Family Insurance. They wanted to know what we did to get ours started, and we were able to lend them technical support such as our guidelines, protocols and other resources.

So when the CUNA community gardens were scheduled to have a grand opening on the 2014 Earth Day, I immediately responded to the invitation with an enthusiastic "yes."

CUNA Mutual has a large campus with many buildings, but is largely land locked in an urban setting on Madison's west side. That didn't stop this group of enthusiastic employees. The proposed putting a community garden on top of the parking deck, which already had a large lawn. In fact, while I was up there, I remarked myself that you would never know we were standing on top of a parking ramp.

In order to overcome the thin layer of soil that was originally only meant to support grass, they are installing raised beds to add some more depth for eager vegetable plant roots. My understanding is they are going to have 40 10 x 10' garden beds. They will also build a couple of accessible garden beds, which are raised higher and have ample access to all sides for someone in a wheelchair.

I was greeted at the front door by Candace and a few other employees I have met along the way. We walked out to the garden area where many of the employee garden participants were waiting in the bright April sunshine.

Jesse Lerner from executive director of Sustain Dane, spoke about the importance of community gardens for employee health and well-being, and as an employee benefit. She also mentioned that as far she knew, this was the first rooftop employee community garden. 

In honor of Earth Day, the CUNA Mutual employees were able to purchase a sticker that allowed them to wear blue jeans on a normally business casual workday. One of the employee representatives announced that $1,700 raised from the sticker sales would be donated to the Lussier Community Education Center. Additionally, there will be two garden plots dedicated to producing food for the community center, and all employees are being asked to donate 10% of their own plot produced to the community center.

After taking a photo of the enthusiastic gardeners, I was asked to participate in a photo of people who supported the community garden project. It was great to be among my gardening peeps.

The garden is slated to be finished and ready for planting by mid to late May.

To till or not to till?

My friend (and garden blogger) Megan Cain recently wrote an entry titled "Stop tilling your vegetable garden!"

I was amused that I read her blog the day before I rented a massive rototiller. Megan's point is to not till every year, a premise I completely agree with. There are many good reasons not till every year, and you can read all about them on her blog. However, sometimes to make an omelette, you gotta break an egg. 

During the last 12 months, I have placed our permanent raised beds in a number of locations in our backyard. In good permaculture fashion, I did a lot of observing before finally deciding to locate them at the far back of the yard, where we have the most sun. This area of the yard had been completely compacted over the years, was a fairly weedy mess, and I kind of just wanted to nuke it and start over.

So I rented an 8-hp rear-tine rototiller and a trailer and brought it home. Within an hour Jay and I frothed up the soil so much it was inches taller than the surrounding compacted ground. 

We then spread many wheelbarrows of a wood chip + coffee ground compost I had been making all winter over the tilled soil. We even put down a plank so we wouldn’t compact it. I then tilled in the compost and returned the equipment within my 4-hour rental time. 

I then dug paths, throwing the soil into where the beds would be. Our paths are going to be filled with gravel to help move water throughout the garden that will be collected from a future shed roof.

As I filled the beds in, the soil was really piling up. Once the paths were dug, I measured the beds at least 14 inches above ground level. Now I know that they will settle, but I’m going to build our raised beds 14 inches tall to leave room for lots of mulch and to be able to continue to add compost to the beds.

The three chickens we were taking care of were out the whole day and LOVED digging in the freshly tilled soil (and pooping in it too :)

Since I’m not going to reinforce the beds with walls for a couple of weeks, I covered them with a huge tarp we had leftover from a roofing project years back. Glad too, the rains a few days ago would have set back a lot of the digging and tilling work!