Kiss me I'm Polish

So my garden has been taken over by a giant gourd, I want to see what's going to happen, so everything is on hold! I did manage to plant one patch of radishes, lettuce, and broccoli.

kick ass batch of finished compost ready for the new bed.

New bed of radishes, lettuce, broccoli, and kick ass compost.

Found this mantis the other day AWESOME!!

The cover crop is coming in.

cover crop close up, can you name all plants? 

Finally, I went to the feed store the other day and found this lady. I had to buy her, coolest lookin chicken ever. She's a blue polish, and is pretty tough for being half blind. The head feathers make it hard for her to see. No I don't have a chicken problem, I only have 7chickens and can quit anytime I want to. Anyways, I don't know what to name her, so I'm up for suggestions???

BOOYAH Q-Tip head lookin chicken

Cover Cropping The Backyard

I planted another cover crop in my backyard this year. Last year I planted a cover crop of oats, wheat, barley, and rye(pasture mix). This year I planted a green manure mix of common vetch, lentils, soybeans (non GMO), arrowleaf clover, crimson clover, sorghum sudan, pearl millet, sudan grass, oats, Nitro oilseed radish, dwarf essex rapeseed, purple top turnips, Ethiopian cabbage, flax, buckwheat, sunflowers, and phacelia from http://www.greencoverseed.com/. Most of the mix are nitrogen fixers but some are soil busters and extra biomass, check out all the cover crop info here. I also mixed in herbs such as dill, oregano, cilantro, and sage so the regular ole bermuda yard should be pretty interesting this year. Cover crops are pretty easy to install I scalp the yard, throw down the seed, rake it into the thatch, and water for 10 minutes everyday for a week. After that the cover crop grows on it's own.

 My dog hangin out in last years cover crop.

 The chicks foraging through last years cover crop.

The chicks doin some more foraging.  The pasture mix will eventually produce seeds that the chicks love to eat. This year I focused more on a soil building mix so the chicks might miss out, but my backyard orchard will really appreciate it, and the chicks never miss out. If your thinking of planting a garden, orchard, or grass yard in the future, cover crop it now to build soil for the future. If you have an existing plot that you want to re-invigorate without using chemicals or working to hard cover crop it. Even big time monoculture overall wearing farmers use cover crops. 

BOOYAH Dave Brandt

Forward Operating Base Munatee

Our new flock is doing well, so well they have out grown their space on our kitchen table. The best scenario would be to put them in the coop in the backyard but my 2 older hens just want to beat the crap out of the new girls. On top of that there's a neighborhood cat that could make quick work of the new chicks. So I need to get them outside but they need to be protected. Building a new full size coop is wastefull (space and material) plus they will all integrate together as soon as every body is the same size. I need a beach head so I built Forward Operating Base Munatee (FOB Munatee) named after the greatest chicken to ever walk the backyard. The coop is modular, built out of 4 panels and held together by 4 screws. FOB Munatee is tough and provides enough room for our new girls and introduces them to their new world. When the girls are done in the new coop I'll take the 4 screws holding it together out and put the panels behind the shed.

FOB Munatee includes shading, duck bathing, a roosting pole, and fresh piece of yard everyday. The coop is light enough to move around to different parts of the yard everyday.

We still bring them in every night but sun up to sun down they're living in the yard (the house smells much better). On a really funny note, once I put the chicks up, the ducks walk across the yard and come inside the house on there own looking for their buds, and one of the chicks thinks it's a duck, she still hasn't figured out how to swim, but keeps on trying. Keep trying Baby Red. 

Booyah!!

Summer update

It's been awhile since I've posted so here's a quick run down of how summer went.

These guys destroyed my tomatillo plants. Three striped potato beetles.

3 striped potato beetle larvae. By the time I figured out how to kill them they had eaten all my tomatillos. An application of bt will kill the larvae.

I'm starting to harvest my black eyed pea crop.

Glass gem corn I'm harvesting.

Raising our new girls has become a full time job and ducks are stinky.

Finally check out my new pile of mulch I scored it from some landscaper friends of mine it's 4 cubic yards of shredded mesquite. This will be the winter of mulch.

Finally Finally the monsoon ended on 9/30/13 and we ended up with just over 3 inches of rain for the season not bad for livin in a desert. 

BOOYAH!!!

My New Flock

What's this bucket doing with a heat lamp above it sitting on our kitchen table for?

It's new additions to our flock! We've got 2 white muscovey ducks (V & G), an Americauna (Georgette), a Rhode Island Red (TBD), a Black Maran (Chicky Ray), and a White Leghorn (TBD)

BOOYAH!! 

R.I.P. Munatee

Tragedy struck 2 days ago when I found my favorite chicken Munatee dead. The heat of the summer was just to much for her. Munatee was brought into my flock by my brother Jacob, he wanted chickens but couldn't keep them at his place. So when I bought my chicks I told him he could by his own chicken and keep it at my house. He soon showed up with an Americauna chick and named it Muntee. As Munatee got older and turned into a hen she developed a real funny character. This was strange to me because I've always thought chickens were pretty much just dumb ole chickens. Muntee's name was soon changed to Munatee because of her huge appetite, she reminded me of the giant sea cows called Manatees. Munatee never missed a meal and was always the first one to the diner plate and last one to leave. Whenever the chicken feeder was empty she would run around the yard squawking as loud as she could until the feeder was filled back up. At a family bbq she snuck up on my sister, ambushed her and took a cheese quesadilla out of hands. All I heard was my sis screaming and then I saw Munatee running through the crowd of people with the quesadilla in her beak. She stole a pulled pork sandwich from my mom at another family bbq. I know these stories sound like some rogue chicken running amok stealing peoples food, and they are, but Munatee has been a part of some of the funniest backyard moments around here and she will be greatly missed. I don't know if you can tell from the writing above but at one point Munatee became mine and she soon became my favorite pet. Munatee was my best laying hen even at almost 4 years old she still would lay one green egg a day. I buried her in the yard with rest of deceased pets.

Aaron and Munatee avatar.

Rise of the striped cucumber beetle

Every year a new pest invades my garden, I thought by now I'd seen them all.

I was wrong, see these cute little guys fornicating away in my pumpkin patch. Harmless right? Wrong. These striped cucumber beetles showed up over night and by the time I figured out what was going on, they had a solid foothold in the garden. The adults feed on the foliage of cucurbits (squash, pumpkin, cucumber, gourd, watermelon, and cantaloupe). The larvae feed on the roots of cucurbits, and they are known spreaders of bacterial wilt. All around nasties, I've been handpicking and vacuuming them off the plants and I think I'm getting the upper hand, but the damage has been done. Sometimes I wish I hag a big ole barrel of DDT.

Beetle damage to armenian cucumber.

One of the reasons I don't use pesticides, that's an assassin bug eating a striped cucumber beetle. The beetles do have some natural predators. The main problem is for every assassin bug there's a 100 beetles. That's how the pest survive, sheer numbers. It's an easy way to tell between beneficial insects and pests. If you don't know if a bug is good for your garden or bad just take a head count, if there's a bunch of them they're probably bad if there are only a few they're probably beneficial.

Now some good news, it's the beginning of August and I'm still harvesting tomatoes. There not huge, but I'm still getting fresh tomatoes in the middle of summer.

That's the tomatillo, black eyed pea, and tepary bean patch bustin out

black eyed pea

Pumpkin patch with volunteer tomatillos and bisbee red black eyed peas.

Monsoon garden planted with corn, sunflowers, beans(climbing and bush), and squash. The 4 sisters, the corn and sunflowers will grow tall to shade the garden. The climbing beans will use the corn and sunflowers as a trellis. The squash and bush beans will crawl along the ground cooling the earth and naturally mulching the soil. All the seeds I planted are native to the southwest and can tolerate the high heat and dry conditions. I bought them at native seed search they sell seeds native to the southwest. Very cool, all their seeds have performed excellent and I'm giving them a shout out. 

BOOYAH NATIVE SEED SEARCH!!!

MONSOON

The monsoon is here, first batch of grapes, some almonds, and the pumpkin patch is in.

My second favorite time of year is here, the monsoon, even though it's hotter than hell out, and the humidity is cranking up this is my second favorite time of year next to spring is upon us. Every day we have the possibility of some great and possibly dangerous storms rolling through, the valley averages 3 inches of rain during monsoon season. So the lid is off of my rain barrel and every evening I sit in the backyard watching the clouds rolling in. This weekend I'm planting a monsoon garden.

I harvested my Red Flame Seedless Grapes.

Not bad at all, they taste great and you can tell by the picture the chickens will mug you for them.

I also harvested my almonds.

Not bad either except they're a bitch to shuck and crack. The raw almonds taste great and I got about 40 almonds which is 39 more than last year. On a side note my pumpkin and Bisbee Red Cowpeas were planted this weekend and the monsoon garden is going in next weekend.

BOOYAH

RIP Red #2

Last night one of my laying hens Red #2 died. I don't think she ever recovered from a prolapsed egg incident that occured months ago here. I bought her another Rhode Island Red chick and a blackstar chic 3 years ago. My brother later delivered an americuana chic to complete our flock of 4 chickens. I was told to expect some of the chics to die or some turn out to be roosters but it never happened, instead our family has been blessed with hundreds of hours of chicken entertainment and hundreds of delicious eggs. Red #2 got her name because she was the number 2 chicken in charge in the backyard only her sister Red #1 was higher up in the pecking order. All week long I could tell she wasn't feeling well, and then yesterday she stopped eating the grapes I had been feeding her as treats and went and laid down in the coop and closed her eyes for good. I buried her this morning in the yard next to our cat Socks.

All 4 of the chics when we first got them.

SUMMER IS HERE

Well summer has finally shown up and it's hot out but the nasty heat heat that drives everyone inside won't be here till mid-July or August. I'm definitely putting down the water. My trees are getting deep watered every 2 weeks to a depth of three feet and my veggie patches are getting watered down 18 inches every 4 days. The easiest way to check your water depth is get a piece of rebar and push into the ground. All the bubblers and drip tape I've installed have kept the water bills about a hundred dollars less than last year at this time. I'm really impressed  that in the heat of the summer we're watering 17 trees, 4 blueberry bushes, 3 grape vines, 1 passion fruit vine, and a 22 foot by 45 foot veggie garden for a $ 150 dollars a month. That number is totally exceptable to my wife and I and I believe I can wittle it down even further by automating the whole system. You see I've figured all the approximate times it takes to get the amount of water down that all the plants need but sometimes I forget the water is on or fall asleep in the middle of the night while it's running, not to mention all the time I spend manually turning on sprinkler valves or dragging hoses around to different emitter setups. So soon I'll begin automating the entire system. I've also had to replant my vine garden because the chickens destroyed the last one, I've had set backs in my potato patch and blueberry patch, I love melons, and I've found some cool new bugs in the garden.

I had to replant my vine garden the original chicken defenses weren't strong enough and the chickens destroyed the whole thing in 2 days. This is the new garden with 4 foot tall fencing around the plants for protection. Lets see the chickens jump that. I kept the plants real simple armenian cucumbers and luffa sponges for the whole thing.

My potato crop this year was a huge failure the basket above was all I harvested. Last year I pulled 25 pounds of taters out of the garden. I blame the failure on buying store bought potatoes and not using seed taters. The plants just never got going maybe next year. I also had a problem in the blueberry patch, I was harvesting a handful of berries everyday, when all of the sudden every bird in the neighborhood figured out there were blueberries afoot and the whole crop even the green ones were gone just like that. I still got 1 cup of tasty blueberries which is one more cup than last years harvest. Those birds are lucky I'm a permaculturist the old Aaron would have settled up with all of them for eating his blueberries, oh well maybe next year. Do you sense a theme here? It doesn't happen overnight. The first year I struggled to get the b-berries through the harsh summer and I suceeded, the second year the birds stole my harvest, So next year I'll have to defend against the birds. PATIENCE PATIENCE PATIENCE!!!!

Do you love melons? I do, they're my favorite summer treat, these are my first honeydews of the season. They're are many ways to test for ripeness, some people can tell by sight, others are thumpers, I'm a pusher and smeller. All you do is push on the belly button (side opposite from the vine) if it pushes in easily the melon is close to ripe, then smell the belly button, if you smell a sweet melon smell then it's ready for harvest. Man I love melons.

Cool bug pic!

This is an assassin bug eating a bee. Assassin bugs are beneficial insects for your garden, they eat other bugs. The only problem is they'll eat other beneficial bugs to (bees).

Finally check out this cool 5 legged grass hopper that showed up, that's right my garden is handicap friendly for all. All in all everything is going great on the farm, I'm still harvesting about 4 pounds of tomatoes a week, but I'm tired of blogging about them and the wife is tired of chopping them but hey.

BOOYAH!!!!

THINK SAFETY

The title of this newest blog was going to be damn it's hot!!! But thanks to a dumb accident it's Think Safety! I've also harvested some more fruits and veggies and planted a couple of summer veggie plots.

Garden is in full bloom all the hollyhocks and sunflowers are volunteers, the sunflowers are naturally shading the garden quite well.

Tomatoes are producing big time, I'm getting this many every three days the majority are little, like super sweet 100, and juliet, the medium size tomatoes, that are doing well, are glacier, and silver fir tree, the better boys have produced a few monster tomatoes, and prudens purple is a no show, all they do is grow tall lanky plants with no fruit. So far we've made this spaghetti sauce, a simple pico de gallo, and a mixture of diced tomatoes, creamy italion dressing, and parmesan cheese which is a great chilled summer salad. We've also been putting tomatoes on everthing under the sun, sandwiches, eggs, or just eating them raw. I fear the looming tomato apocalypse, where there are no more tomatoes and we have to go back to buying those crappy store bought things they call a tomato.

Here's the garlic harvest hanging and drying in the shade of the porch. This year I decided to go hardcore with garlic since we use it all the time, I ordered some gourmet garlic and planted a nice big bed of them all in one place and got some decent results, but I noticed the garlic in the giant bed didn't get as big as the heads I randomly planted around the garden. It turns out garlic is slightly allelopathic.Which means they produce a chemical which slightly inhibits the growth of the plants around them, who new? So next year I'll spread them out and see how they do.

Still getting some fresh peaches Desert Gold Peach.

I planted 2 summer veggie beds, that I amended all of the soil with compost pile omega. I planted some tomatillos that I grew from seed, and also dug up some volunteers that showed up from last years tomatillo  patch, cowpeas(black eyed peas), pole beans, sunflowers,basil, chiltepines ,and tepary beans .

Finally a note on safety do you see the red part on the right side of my finger, do you see how it's flat and not round, that's because I lobbed the tip of my finger off while slicing a roast up yesterday with my meat slicer     making italion beef.

The sandwiches were great once I pulled part of my finger out of them. The lesson here is a little bit of inattentiveness caused an accident, that's how most accidents are caused. 90% of accidents are caused by not paying attention, which is what happened here. As I was explaining to my by boss this morning, why I was having a hard time getting some simple tasks completed, he told me a least I was deli slicing the meat and not cutting it into 1/2 inch slices. Bottom line pay attention to what you're doing, driving, running a wood chipper, swinging a pick, climbing a ladder, or slicing up Sunday dinner on your meat slicer.

OUCH!!! This blog post was typed completely using only one hand.

BOOYAH!!!

Some things don't always go my way

This week has been a week of setbacks I had a couple of huge failures, finally picked all my carrots, and finished up one of my projects.

THE FAILS FIRST

The top band on my whiskey barrel pond broke and it now only holds about half of it's water ARGH!!

The pond is on life support I'm going to see if I can get it through summer.

Here's the band aid I put on it a ratchet strap but it's still leaking like the Exxon Valdez. The bright side to this mishap is I've begun research on a new permaculture pond I'll be putting in the backyard in a few months when I have saved up some dough. Moral of the story whiskey barrels make bad ponds but they're still hands down one of the best planters you can use, they're repurposed, they have great insulation for our summer heat, and you can plant a ton of stuff in them.

Fail # 2 was much harder to accept, this weekend the new buds on the apple tree I grafted shriveled up and died then the scion that was grafted onto the rootstock shriveled up and turned brown, today I looked at it closer when I wiggled the scion it came out of the rootstock, the graft never took. I had a full blown hissy fit ARGH!!!!

I'm not giving up on grafting I'm still going to learn how to do it but, this sucks. I've killed thousands of plants in my lifetime it's part of what you sign up for when you choose this lifestyle but this one has bothered me the most!

We finally picked the last of the carrots I'd be more excited about this huge harvest except I'm tired of carrots. Carrots for every meal everyday for a month is killing me I think my blood has turned orange. We gave most of this away (in permaculture you're supposed to share your excess). If you've never had french carrot salad you should try it. Next year less carrots more brocoli.

Finally a little more about permaculture, part of permaculture is energy consevation so to save a little energy this year I installed a new back door and jam plus an energy efficient dog door. You could see through parts of the old door and the dog door flap had a big hole in it, it was so big one of the chickens figured out how to get in the house. I replaced everything and sealed the new door with foam. Eliminating air leakage from your house is one of the easiest things you can do to bring your summer cooling bills down. I would also recommend shade screens, ceiling fans, and planting deciduous trees on the west side of your house as easy ways to help save energy.. SRP offers free shade trees here. I'm gonna say the halo around the picture is a sign of brighter things to come and not a bad picture taken of a door in the sun.

booyah.