C'mon Rain!

I'm ready! Chicken chores completed. Spinach, mustard, and kale picked and washed. Soil fluffed in selected beds and seeds planted. Skies are gray. It smells like rain, and rain is expected. But I didn't want to take any chances … I watered those seeds in ... even though Rouse the Spouse laughed at me!

A full bed of beets. Three rows, three varieties:

• Furano
• Red Ace
• Ruby Queen
• + one more row of Furano variety to fill in the existing bed of spinach

A small bed:

• Hakurei, salad turnips
• Easter Egg radishes
• a few good ol' red radishes
• more Red Cardinal spinach

A small bed:

• half Mizuna (Indian mustard)
• half Arugula

I'm looking for spring … warm sunshine and gentle rains.

Made the Potato Bed

65 degrees under clear blue skies! What a roller coaster the weather has been lately. We've had some sort of frozen precipitation every week for a month. And they're calling for more freezing rain next week. But in between … we have these lovely days that beckon us outdoors and give us hope that spring is on the way.

I've been anticipating this day.

• Leaves collected and stored for the purpose of blanketing the young sprouts.
• One-and-a-half raised beds prepared and waiting for 'taters.
• Seed potatoes cut into segments, cured, and ready to go into the garden. This year's varieties:  Austrian Crescent fingerlings (1-1/2#), Purple Viking (2#), Yukon Gold (2#) … ended up with about one-half pound extra bits.

Today I put all those things together to make the "lazy" potato beds. It's easy to do! Here's what they look like when finished:

Think About Potatoes ...

… and different planting options. I plant a "lazy bed", using method #2, except I use leaf mulch in place of the straw.

http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/7-ways-plant-potatoes

County Farm & Home Supply

Nice article in the News & Observer yesterday - Melinda Fitzgerald, Tarheel of the Week. Country Farm & Home Supply is my source for all things garden and chicken. It's rumored that Rouse the Spouse is their #1 buyer of black oil sunflower seeds!

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/01/3661560/in-pittsboro-spreading-the-seed.html

Good Day to Clean the Chicken Coop

70 degrees!
And tomorrow night the low is expected to be 17  :-(

But today is Sunday … plenty of time to enjoy the sunshine and the warmth. The perfect day to clean the chicken coop! AND the perfect day to prepare garden beds, spreading that good stuff that comes out of the chicken coop. My raised beds are getting old. We add mulch and other organic matter to the beds every year, but they seem to be getting "tired". I'm hoping a little potent fertilizer from the chicken house will boost crop yields in the long run.

We have a pile of manure that's been "cooking" for 6 months. It has broken down and now looks like dirt … rich, black dirt. I spread that between the rows of the greens that are currently growing under cover. (lettuce, spinach, tatsoi, kale) Then I mixed some of the composted manure with a bin full of wood ash, ratio 2:1 chicken manure:wood ash and spread it over the asparagus bed.

I scraped accumulated manure out of the nesting boxes, from under the roosting perches ... and from any other flat surface the chickens have been pooping on … mixing it liberally with the straw that we use as litter to cover the floor of the coop and all other surfaces. The girls came into the coop right away to check out the proceedings.

I spread this rich mix on currently empty raised beds and used it to mulch the blueberries and wineberries. I finished off the asparagus bed with a layer of the straw / manure mix, too. One of the Dominiques couldn't resist playing in the straw-filled wheelbarrow.

We use straw as litter, but there are other options … and other products to avoid. Here's an interesting article about what to use as litter in the chicken coop:  http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2012/08/straw-vs-shavings-my-choice-for-coop.html

Not All Manure is Created Equal

The nutrient value of manures varies by animal. Chicken manure is considered to be the most beneficial for your garden, with an N-P-K (nitrogen - phosphorous - potassium) ratio of about 1.1–0.8–0.5. Compare that with cows at 0.6–0.2–0.5 and horse manure, 0.7–0.3–0.6. Of course, even within species, the quality of the manure will vary.

Using Wood Ash in the Garden

http://www.growveg.com/growblogpost.aspx?id=217