It's Coming Alive!

The first veggies of the season are now officially planted in the garden. Those pictured are peas -- Amish Snap and Green Arrow -- that will hopefully, delightfully run up the twine forming nice arches. This whole gardening thing is definitely an experiment. I have no idea if these plants will like the soil they're planted in; whether they'll actually run up the twine; or if they do, whether they'll block the sun to the others.

However, I very much like the trellis design. The a-frame design prevails again! You may remember that the chicken coop was an a-frame. The trellis was made using one 2''x6'' by 14', of old wood fencing of which we have a gaggle. Twine is then run from the top beam to metal piping (preferred) or secured to the ground using old wire clothes hangers.

Planting these veggies in the garden for the first time reminded me of how a mother might feel when she first lets her child play outside without supervision. Outside the greenhouse it's a dangerous world, where deer, rabbits, gophers, birds, and other living things could easily wipe out months of growing! Yet, I think with life, and with these veggies, you just have to leave it up to chance. Let the world do as it may. C'est la vie.

Rototiller Partay!

With the last frost estimated to be less than a month away (my elevation is 2000ft., and at zone 8a - or so they say) and with a brief break in the rainy weather, it was about time we got off our behinds and till! Aliyah and I got up at 6 in the morning to pick up our worker friends, Kacey and Robert, the rototiller, and oodles of coffee and doughnuts.

The space we chose to till amounted to a 50' by 30' foot area, estimating that we were tilling not only for the current year's crops but for next. Using the rototiller is extremely evasive to the natural micro-organisms living in the soil, and thus not something to do every year. Ideally, this garden will turn into a no-till garden that relies purely on green manure planted between the growing season, compost, and mulch from the nearby oak trees. But with our virgin clay loam sod being very compacted, the rototiller was a necessary evil to prepare the soil for gardening.

You'll also notice that there is white webbing fencing surrounding the plot. This is meant to act as the primary dear deterrent. It's actually electrified and made with an unit that had been laying around the old house for years. We'll see if it actually does the trick and keeps the dear away!

Oh, and we also added 5 cubic yards of mulch, courtesy of the county of El Dorado Fairgrounds, which was amended to the soil by hand to add nitrogen and balance the ph. This complicated the tilling process and made work a lot harder.

I wish we could've put the dogs to work! All they did was nap and occasionally beg us to throw sticks.

Bee Update

While we're having these massive rainstorms and a late spring, I thought I'd give an update on the bee hive plan. After reading more about bees and going to a few great bee classes offered by the UC Davis Agriculture Extension, I've found it is increasingly more difficult to keep bees. Varroa Mites will be a major concern, as well as numerous negative environmental factors such as local pesticide use and California buckeye growth in the area (our state tree is poisonous to bees). 

With these considerations in mind, I've decided to look further than my local bait hives for obtaining a colony. First, I broke down and bought a Nuc of bees. A Nuc, short for nucleus, is an already established five-frame set of bees. This means that the bees will have already built out the comb, the queen will have already laid her eggs (brood), and have a strong egg laying pattern. All this is important because female worker bees only have a 21 day life cycle and thus there needs to always be a strong crop of replacements ready to take over.

Second, I bought a 4lb. package of bees (with a Russian queen potentially more resistant to Varroa Mites). The big downside of a package of bees is that the bees are not familiar with the queen, since they were only recently placed with one another, and the bees haven't begun to build out any honey comb. As a result, the bees will then have to start from scratch once they are placed into the hive. However, since I'll have the Nuc, there will be ways to equalize the weaker hive with the stronger one, by either giving brood cells (a whole frame) to the weaker hive or by switching the hives' location so the bees from the strong hive mistakenly fly into the weaker hive with their pollen/nectar/water stores. I'll also be able to compare the two hives giving me more information about each of their strengths and weaknesses.

And then there's always the possibility of snagging a feral (wild) colony with the bait hives. Once the good weather returns and the bees go into swarming season, we'll see if they choose my hives as a home. I give it a 75% chance. A couple of weeks ago before the storms came in the bees were all over the hives, so they've scoped the area out and know of its existence, and will go back -- or so the theory goes.

The Chicken Coop

Today, with the addition of hen-laying chickens (pullets), the place is really starting to feel like an organic farm. Using leftover wood and scrap materials, we constructed a box coop with a 13'x21' a-frame run, enclosed all in 1" chicken wire. The a-frame was quite fun to put up, assembling it on the ground and then lifting it up all at once. For this reason, I recommend the a-frame design for small shelters or enclosures.

To get the chickens, we drove out to Nevada City to meet a french woman and her daughter who had a pretty cool operation. They were raising all sorts of breeds nestled quaintly in the woods, and we were able to get pairs of several different kinds, non of which I can remember the names of, except the sex-links--I wonder why. We got eleven!

The names of which are:
Cookies (black and white speckled)
Cream (white and black speckled)
Butter (light brown)
Nut (light brown)
Spaghetti (dark brown)
Squash (dark brown)
Bobby Craig (black, lightly speckled)
Johnny Cash (Brown with white splotches... and a guitty)
Snow & White (two white hens with red mohawks, who peck).
And the last is called Dinner.

The sun is setting, the chickens are in their coop, the bees their hives, and me my trailer, all content. Time for dinner. Not chicken. I wonder when they're going to start laying eggs. They could tomorrow!

Germination Station

Using the 1.5" potting block, I planted many seeds in the greenhouse: lettuces, arugula, radishes, broccoli, squashes, tomatoes, beets, corn, watermelons, tomatillo, and kale, to name a few.  I wasn't sure how it'd go, but after a couple days all the arugula sprouted.

With half of the seeds coming up after only about 6 days, the germination rate looks to be about 90%, which is fantastic. Thank you Seed Savers Exchange for the awesome preservation of seed.

Now, the next step is to build a fence for the garden, till the area, add the super duper compost from the old house, blood meal (or equivalent), and oyster shells, before setting in the veggies. No rush though, I have 6-8 weeks until the last frost, which I'm been told to be safe is around mother's day.

Bees

A week ago or so, I put up three bait hives to try and attract a local hive of bees. It took a little bit of planning, but I put the hives about eleven feet up in the air, which is where they apparently like to set up shop.

And just these past couple days bees have been all up in the all three hives! Even though it has been off and on raining. It didn't rain today, though it threatened to in the latter half of the day, and the bees weren't out. Maybe they know something about the weather we don't. But really excited to see so many bees on all the hives at the same time.

The next question is if they'll call my hives home, or if they're just scoping the place for food and what not. If they do, I hope I'm around to see it. They'll swarm together in a big clump to protect their queen to bring her over to the new home.

The Greenhouse

Today it is snowing, but just last week it was 70 degrees.

The greenhouse surrounded by river rock (and a couple dragon eggs)

With the narcissus bulbs showing early signs of bloom and the recently transplanted pear tree showing full buds, I decided to give the greenhouse a test with some old seeds I had laying around. I had recently read romantic stories of greenhouses covered with snow, but with lettuce growing cozily inside, and wanted to try a go at early season greenhouse growing.

I also wanted to experiment with the new potting blocks I ordered for the occasion. Potting blocks are these metal contraptions used to make a soil mold in which to start seeds. The great thing about these thing-a-ma-jigs is they potentially last forever, aren't made of plastic, and allow for more soil per area than traditional plastic cells. And, they are adaptable to various sizes, which means a small soil block can fit inside a larger one and so on (think of a Russian nesting doll but with plants). As soil, I used a batch of humus (decomposed horse manure) that had been marinating at the old house for years.

Nestled among the old seeds, I came across a couple goji berry seeds! So I planted these as well (not pictured).

The mini and the 2 inch potting blocks are shown here. When the seeds sprout, I will experiment with the 4 inch block.

You can see I experimented with both the plastic cells and the potting blocks.