PICTURE POST

I'm a little tired this morning so I'm just going to show you a bunch of pics of what's going down on the farm.

This guy showed up on the wall above my front yard garden a month ago.


Yesterday I found this.

And here she is almost ready to fly off if you look close you see her drivers side wing isn't unfolded all the way.

Almond tree in full bloom with a chicken grazing.

Baby almond, almonds are just like peaches, when they are growing they look like a peach but you don't eat the flesh, instead the flesh dries out and you eat the pit (an almond).

The one almond my 2 trees produced last year.

Sunshine Blueberry blooms, this blue berry probably has 500 flowers on it, my other 3 Misty Blueberries aren't blooming?????

Remember all my tomato and pepper starts?

Here they are none the peppers did well I'll have to work on that next year but I've got 40 tomato plants.

Burgundy Plum that I cut down to 24 inches is bustin out the Santa Rosa is still dormant.

Anna Apple in bloom.

Potatoes are coming up.

Remember compost pile omega

Here it is compost pile not so omega. That giant pile of organic matter has turned into this little pile of compost. The rule is 1000 pounds of organic matter will turn into 200 pounds of compost.

Southern Belle Necatarine in bloom.

Bonanza Peach in bloom.

FINALLY BE CAREFUL THE CHICKENS ARE WATCHING.

Chicken update, some bustin out,split head, and dog vomit

Well it's been another busy week here, I have a chicken update, some more plants have started bloming here, my cabbage crop is shredded, and I found some neat fungi.

Here's my girl Red 2, she has now made it a week since I had to cut an egg out of her,  she is eating, and foraging, but she still spends most of the day resting, and hanging out by herself. The other girls are all hanging out together and don't even seem to notice her. I'm still optimistic, but her size has diminished considerably, she is now much smaller than the rest of the girls, she used to be alot bigger than all but one of the girls (Red 1) hence the name Red 2.

This is my favorite time of year, Why? More bustin out.

 Sunshine Blue Blueberry bustin out.

 Florida Prince Almond bustin out.

 Desert Gold Peach bustin out.

Dorset Golden Applee bustin out.

Here's my first cabbage head of the year, it's 3 times as big as store bought cabbage and taste 10 times better, but the recent rains made it split(to much water makes cabbage split), splitting is fine except you can't store the heads as long, when they're split, and if you're growing heads for St. Patties Day they won't make it a month in the fridge. My cabbage crop this year only produced 3 good heads out of 6 transplants. No big deal there's still plenty of cabbage for everybody, until today, when I went outside and found another head split, (dammit). So now we have to eat cabbage for another week,(no big deal here comes a cabbage roll recipe) our corned beef and cabbage is starting to look pretty weak with only 1 cabbage head left.

 Finally some Slime Mold

Actually this is called dog vomit, you can see why, this patch of dog vomit showed up in my sheet mulching project. It's a great sign it means of soil decomposers (fungi). They have shown up and are doing there job(decomposing) . Soil building 101, it's amazing. This is soil being built out of newspaper and rabbit poop, all free.

What dog vomit looks like before it turns into dog vomit, AWESOME!!!

A dog gone tragedy, peach in full bloom, and chicken surgery

Well it's been a bad week around here, my dog killed a tree and I had to operate on one of my chickens today. At least the blooming Peach tree is looking great.

Here's my girl, while playing fetch today she ran over one of the newly planted plum trees and it broke off below the graft. 

Dead Jim

The good thing? I looked at the root structure real close when I pulled the broken tree out. Do you see that big root to the right that's the tap root. It had been in the pot so long it hit the bottom of the pot and started growing back up. I new these were trees were crappy trees when I bought them. There's a good chance this tree would never had made it IDK. But I planted 3 more just like it so we'll see.

Here's the replacement a Burgundy Plum that I spent 26 dollars on. It's a nice looking bare root plum I cut it down to 24 inches The stick on the right is the part I cut off and stuck in the ground. I have officially banned the game of fetch in the backyard.

This next part is tough, I'm just going to cut and paste what I posted on a forum for some answers.

Today when I came home from work I started working on my to do list. While I was cleaning out my fish tanks I noticed something hanging off the backside of one of RIR girls, at first I thought it was just a turd, then I looked closer and noticed she had half an egg sticking out of her vent. "WTF" I grabbed her and took her inside and started soaking her in warm water. My wife came out and couldn't believe what she was seeing. The egg was stuck half way out, and the lining of her vent was also coming out. More or less the whole egg was outside her body but half of the egg was still in the lining, I believe the term is she was prolaxed. While soaking our girl the wife and I bounced ideas off each other about what to do, at first we thought to just break the egg but noticed the lining of her vent was actually stuck to the egg shell. Finally after 20 minutes of of trying to massage the egg out I decided something had to be done. I pulled out my pocket knife and as my  wife held our girl I inserted the knife between the lining and the egg and gently worked the knife around the whole egg once this was done the egg popped right out and I pushed the lining back in. I was very careful with my knife and don't believe I cut any of her lining, I also pushed the lining of her vent back in, her vent lining is staying inside of her as of right now. I let her go back with the flock and they didn't even seem to notice, she walked around for about 30 minutes and then jumped into one of the nest boxes and is sleeping in the box as of right now. I don't know if I did the right thing but feel I did the best I could in the moment our girl was in alot of pain when I found her. If things don't work out I know what to do. Has this happened to any of you? And what should I do for her future care? She seems to be resting peacefully for now but I know there's another egg coming and there is know way that can be good for her. In the moment I didn't even think to take a pic but I found one on the internet I'll post in an attachment. Here's a pic of her resting the whole event was emotionally draining for my wife and I and it brought into focus that with chickens(or any animal) anything can happen at anytime.

Red 2

DON'T LOOK AT THE NEXT PIC IF YOU ARE SQUEEMISH

I'm optimistic about her future but I am thankful Deb was here as we worked through this ordeal together. 

Finally some good stuff my Florida Prince Peach is in full bloom and it is amazing the peach crop is looking good this year, so far.

Bustin Out, New Arrivals,& WTF

This has been a fun week around here alot of  my fruit trees have started blooming (bustin out), I planted 4 new trees, and 1 of my peach trees trees has shown up with some freaky looking wounds. First off my Anna and Golden Dorsett Apples started budding out, along with my Florida Prince Peach tree(bustin out). I planted 4 new trees. One Pineapple Guava the flowers are supposed to taste like candy, I don't no much about the fruit, but I love candy so I probably won't get much fruit. Two plum trees Santa Rosa and Mariposa Plums, the Santa Rosa is a proven winner here in the valley, the Mariposa is supposed to be even better. We'll see I haven't been able to find alot of info on the Mariposa except what's on the Dave Wilson Nursery website. Both of these trees were root bound , I took a knife to the root ball and opened it up I also cut them down to 30 inches to build a better scaffold hopefully? They were 12 bucks each from HD so if they don't work out I can get my money back. Finally I planted a Chinese Honey Fig, I bought the tree through the VPA fruit tree program.. According to the info about the tree in 1979 general secretary to the communist party of China Deng Xiaping brought a Chinese Honey Fig as a present for then President Jimmy Carter in his 1979 visit to the U.S. The tree was then cloned and grown throughout the US, the Az Rare Fruit Growers propagated the trees for this years tree sale. It's a cool story even if it's not true and I've got a new fig tree. Finally my Desert Gold Peach tree showed up with some real gnarly looking wounds all the sudden. Nobody really knows what's going on but I think it has to do with the freezing temps 2 weeks ago and now the trees are bustin out, we'll see.

Florida Prince Peach bustin out

Dorset Golden Apple bustin out.

Anna Apple bustin out.

Bubbler system for the newbies.

New bubbler system finished I now have 8 zones on my sprinkler system in my backyard for watering my lawn and trees.

Pineapple Guava

 The Mariposa Plum, and Santa Rosa Plum I decided to try a few different things with there planting. The tree was extremely root bound so I really cut into the rootball. I also applied some new school planting techniques, I only dug the hole as big as the container, I didn't amend the soil, and I made sure that the tree was planted above the soil level of the backyard. The tree is planted on a mound and the root flare (where the roots start at) are right at the top of the hill. This tough love style of planting seems odd but it makes sense. Amending the soil and digging the hole 2-3 times bigger than the rootball only coddles the tree and doesn't really help it adapt to the valleys harsh soils. Planting the tree on a hill with the top of the root flare almost exposed keeps the tree from drowning, the main killer of new trees is over watering, because the tree sits down lower than the level of the yard that's around it,  you want to encourage the tree roots to grow deep, not shallow. You accomplish this by deep infrequent watering. I also knee capped the trees which means I cut all branches off at 30 inches this will insure that the trees form a short wide structure better for urban orcharding. The pics above are before and after Mariposa Plum

Santa Rosa Plum planted high and knee capped.

Chinese Honey Fig planted high no knee capping required. Side notes, chickens love figs, and fig trees are one of the few plants that love a top dressing of cow manure. You want your fig to grow big, throw down some cow manure.

Finally my Desert Gold Peach showed up with these crazy wounds. I have no idea where they came from, I'm hoping they're from the recent crazy weather, 5 days of freezing and an inch and a half of rain over this weekend. I hope?

Winter Pruning

I've never thought much about pruning my deciduous fruit trees, but this year I took a couple of pruning classes and have decided to give it a shot. You prune your fruit trees to create a better structure within the tree, trees that aren't pruned get tall and leggy and cannot support the weight of the fruit they bear. A mature peach tree can produce 600 lbs. of fruit. You can also prune trees to dwarf them, dwarfing rootstocks inhibit the growth of trees which usually means you get an under performing tree but if you prune properly you get  the advantage of using better rootstock and you can keep the tree any size you want. Backyard orchardist keep there trees smaller so they can plant more trees in a smaller area and so they don't have to use ladders. You prune your trees when they drop all of there leaves(go dormant) the same with grapes. This year that day was January 16th. I pretty much removed a third of the trees growth and tried to focus on getting 5-6 main branches growing up from the trunk of the tree this is called a scaffold. These branches will be the main fruit bearing branches, fruit only forms on 2 year old growth, so you always want to leave some of last years growth on the tree so you get fruit. I also pruned off branches that crossed or grew towards the middle of the tree. It's pretty hard knocking off a third of a tree that you've spent the last 3 years caring for but in the end I think I'll be rewarded with a better tree. I also pruned my grapes back but that was not as dramatic because I've done that before. I've put a couple of links in this post for cane and spur pruning grapes, they're spot on. Grapes also only grow on second year growth.

Three year old Florida Prince Peach before

After

2 year old Desert Gold Peach before

After, I wasn't real happy with the way this tree grew so I decided to prune heavy keeping only the main structure which means I won't get any fruit this year but in the long run the tree will have better scaffolding and support more fruit in the future.

Grapes are different each variety needs a different style of pruning my Thompson Seedless needs the be cane pruned but my Red Flame Seedless needs to be spur pruned.

Thompson Seedless before.

After cane pruned

Red Flame Seedless before

After spur pruned

Monukka Seedless this grape didn't grow to well this year (I think because it's to close to the wall) I just trimmed him back we'll see if it even buds out this spring.

Pruning review Don't be afraid in case you cut the tree flush with the ground you won't kill it, pruning is actually good for deciduous fruit tress and grapes, make sure you use a good sharp pair of pruners. I like to grind braches up in the chipper and use them for mulch around the trees, but with chickens the mulch doesn't stay there long.

Chicken Rototillers, Spring Seeds, & the BIG FREEZE

It has been busy around here, even though we're in the middle of winter. I've been busy and the weather has been down right ridiculous. For the last five days the highs have been in the mid 40's and the thermometer on the back porch has read 26 degrees every morning. THIS IS PHOENIX!!! My brother in D.C. has had nicer weather. The garden hoses in the back yard are frozen solid but thankfully no pipes have burst. My chickens have weathered the hard freeze well, they got a new piece of garden to pick through, and the cold hasn't seemed to phase them at all. I've always wanted a chicken feather coat, I bet it would be super warm.

Chickens are great they're easy to keep, you get fresh eggs everyday (and yes they taste better), and they're always entertaining. BUT they are a menace to your garden, they spend there entire day trying to invade your garden to destroy everything they touch. BUT they also provide some great benefits, they scratch and turn over the ground and they add little bits of fertilizer every time they poop(and they poop alot). I finally figured out how to harness these little self fertilizing rototillers. I've cut chicken size holes in my garden fence that are closed off with gates most of the time. When one of my garden beds get's finished producing I cut it down, put up temporary fencing, and open up the gates. I really believe the beds are in better shape after a month of chicken rototilling.

 Temporary fence going up.

A view through the chicken gate.

The final setup the chickens are doing there thing but they aren't running wild in the garden.

I also started my spring tomatoes and peppers. This is the first year I've tried this and have high hopes for a bunch of different varieties. I used the Jiffy pods to plant in because they're easy to start seeds in. Overall I have over 100 different starts.

Here's my starts all planted up should be 7-10 days for germination. Peppers planted Serrano,Italian Pepperoncini, Poblano, & Anaheim. Tomatoes planted Prudens Purple, Better Boy Hybrid, Juliet Hybrid,Super Sweet 100, Glacier, Silver Fir Tree, & Early Girl Hybrid.

Finally THE BIG FREEZE
I haven't seen it get this cold here in a long time but everything outside froze and we had a few casualties here.

 My cape honeysuckle & potted peppers, pretty much dead.

This is what came out of my garden hose once water started flowing through it it was frozen solid for 5 days.

This is my passion fruit vine I'm pretty sure all it's foliage is dead but the vine will grow back. We'll see
booyah?