Hens as Compost Turners in the Garden

Don and I need more garden beds. But we spent time, money, and a lot of muscle building the four raised beds that we started with, so we thought we would build our next four beds the lazy man's way, using a method called sheet mulching or the lasagna layer technique. It's a way to compost in place to build up soil for a new bed instead of digging down to get your garden. The biggest drawback is that you have to wait a season or so before planting.

Don and I recently set up some lasagna-layer beds, but I admit they didn't look like much. They looked like they'd take years to break down into something I'd be willing to plant vegetables in. Here is a picture of what we were starting with. It contains layers of cardboard, leaves, somewhat aged compost, and straw mixed with a week's worth of manure from our chicken coops:

Sheet-mulched raised beds before attention from our hens

Don and I know how much our girls love to scratch and forage for insects, seeds, and other food, so we wondered if we could use those skills to turn these beds and get the composting process going faster. Don built a pen that fit over our raised beds. There's a pop-hole that leads from our chicken tractor to the pen over the beds, as pictured and described in this post. We had already used the hens in this pen as herbiciders and pesticiders in our raised asparagus beds, but we wanted to see what they would do when we turned them loose on our future garden beds as well.

The first thing we noticed was that the new digs were a huge hit with the hens. They even ate about 50% less feed when on a fresh sheet-mulched bed, presumably from all the fresh food they find on their own. Here is a brief video of our girls having a good time working a bed this morning. It's the same bed I pictured at the top of this page, but it already is starting to look different due to the hen's attention.

Here is what the same bed looked like at the end of the day today:

Nike is pecking at something good in the compost pile!

Sharp-eyed Athena is begging for a treat-- got any meal worms?

After about three days of attention from the girls, the bed starts to lose the girls' interest, and they start eating a lot more feed. Perhaps they've found all the weed-seeds and bugs that they're going to for a while. They will be ready for us to move their tractor and pen to another bed or a different part of the yard. But this is what the bed will look like after just those three days:

Raised bed after three days of chicken-tilling efforts

There is no doubt about it: the chickens are speeding the decomposition process and composting our sheet-mulched beds into usable soil faster. They basically turn other people's garbage into the raw materials of a vegetable garden. And they do it without the noise, pollution, or expense of gas-powered tillers or other equipment. They literally work for chicken feed, and they are happy about it, and they add valuable nitrogen to the bed in the form of their own manure while they're at it!

One important decision we have left is how soon to plant after the chickens have turned the bed. Since they have deposited fresh droppings, and their manure can transmit salmonella, published advice is to wait for 90 to 180 days after the chickens have visited the bed to plant a food crop, depending on the crop. But we needed to wait at least that long before planting under the sheet-mulch system, anyway, so we have little to lose, and lots to gain, by having the chickens work the beds for us.

**Update on 1/18/14: We have been using those sheet-mulched beds to grow garlic, and I now have a fig tree growing very happily in one. I cannot believe how quickly the beds broke down into something usable and very fertile. I think the hens' manure and aerating-skills were a huge part of the success.

Potted Herbs Beside the House

Thyme

We grow potted plants along a sunny wall outside our house. I probably will move the herbs to the main garden behind the house eventually. For now, it is very convenient to have them within easy reach of the kitchen, since several of the plants are herbs. We grow thyme, oregano, parsley, a little lettuce, tomatoes, and flowers. The tomatoes are from the "Little Tomato That Could," a plant that came up last fall. We nurtured it all winter long.

The mixture of herbs, tomatoes, and flowers attracts beneficial insects and predators to the garden. We haven't had problems with insect pests in this corner of the garden all summer.

Lettuce and Oregano

The Little Tomato That Could

One of the logs from a tree Don recently trimmed to give my vegetable-gardens more sun is quite pretty. I asked him to cut the log in such a way that I can move it to my garden and use it as a planter. I am thinking I will put some soil in the hollowed-out area and plant shallow-rooted crops like lettuce in the fall. It will be decorative and a little useful.

Marigolds Attract Beneficials

Carrots

Potential Container for Lettuces

Another View

Attracting Predators to the Garden

Black Swallowtail Caterpillars in my dill

I try to use eco-friendly gardening practices. This means I use lots of compost and minimize or eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, fungicides, and other "-cides"  when I garden. When I do use a chemical, I will use an organic one, and only if other options have failed. I try to attract birds, wasps, and other predators to my garden to eat caterpillars and other pests so that nature does much of my bug-killing for me. If I wanted to kill off the caterpillars in my dill,for example, I would hand pick them off and squish them. But it's the end of the season, the dill is bolting, anyway, the predators do need food, and I happen to like Black Swallowtail butterflies, so the 'pillars pictured get a break, at least from me.

It's amazing how fast caterpillars grow and how fast they eat up plants, though. They have enormous appetites. If I needed that dill, these caterpillars would be history, pretty as they are!

Sunflowers attract beneficials

The first rule to attracting predators is not to kill them. This is one reason why I use pesticides and other "-cides" very sparingly. "-Cide" is Latin for "kill." Pesticides on the vegetables I am going to cook and eat are not only bad for the health of my family, but they can easily kill off the "good bugs," birds, and other creatures I actually want to attract to my vegetable beds. If I must use a pesticide or other chemical, I use it sparingly and according to the directions on the label. I spray in the evening, after the bees and other pollinators have mostly gone to bed for the night.

Birds need water!

Birdbaths are an easy way to attract robins and other birds to your garden. Look for one that is easy to clean. It should be shallow at the edges and then gradually become deeper towards the middle. Birds need not only to drink fresh water, but they also need to take baths, too. They like to dip their feet into a birdbath and then gradually walk down to a depth that is comfortable for them before they actually start bathing.

Place your birdbath away from bushes or anything that can hide cats; birds feel vulnerable when their wings are wet. But try to put the birdbath near some low-hanging tree branches, fence posts, or other locations where the birds can shake off the excess water, look around, and preen themselves for a bit once they've finished their bath. Robins really like to visit my garden and birdbaths, and I like to see them, since they and their young have a huge appetite for caterpillars and other insects.

Speaking of insects, be sure to dump out the stale water in your birdbath every couple of days in the summer, and replace it with fresh water. This prevents mosquitoes from breeding in your birdbath. Be sure to check it frequently and replace water as it dries out, too. A dry birdbath does the birds no good! Keep the birdbath full so the birds keep their habit of stopping there frequently. Keep it clean so the birds don't get sick from the water.

Spicy Nasturtiums are not only flowers, but edible too!

Flowers will attract not only the pollinators that you need for your tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables to set fruit, but they will also feed and attract predatory insects. This year I have planted cosmos, nasturtiums, marigolds, and other flowers in and around my vegetable beds. Some, like the nasturtiums, are actually edible. So far the different kinds of flowers have been growing at different rates and blooming at different times of  year, which is great, because pollinators and predatory insects need food all season long. Marigolds and sunflowers have particularly strong reputations for being easy to grow and good at attracting beneficial insects and keeping the "bad bugs" away.

"Cottage Red" marigold

I recently read that mint plants attract beneficial wasps and predatory flies to the garden. We tend to think of wasps and flies as bad, but this isn't necessarily so. I moved my potted mint, which had started to flower, out near my vegetable beds. Every time I look I see predator flies and wasps of different sizes and colors greedily feeding at the nectar from these tiny mint flowers. I am careful to leave the wasps alone, and they don't bother to sting me.

Wasps love mint flowers

The wasps feed themselves from flower nectar, then they go hunting for caterpillars and other bugs to feed their larvae-babies. Just be sure to keep your mint in a BIG pot or contain it in some other way, because mint will take over your garden if you let it! If it goes to seed, watch for it germinating in unwanted places in the spring, and pull it up before it has a chance to establish itself. It easily becomes a weed.

Early June Garden Efforts

This has been a beautiful weekend for puttering around in my garden. Most plants seem to be thriving, perhaps due to the weather, perhaps due to the top-dressing with compost and mulching with leaves as I mentioned in my previous post. I had a few garlic bulbs tucked in a small flower garden in front of the house. I had nowhere else to plant them last fall, since Don hadn't yet built our raised beds. Yesterday I harvested the bulbs, cut off the tops, cut back the roots to 1/4 inches, and let them rest in a lawn chair on our shady front porch to dry for a couple of days. Then they'll need to cure for a couple of weeks in a dry, dark place to develop full flavor for eating.

Then they won't last long. Don LOVES garlic, and he's developed his own system for peeling the garlic and then roasting it. After that, he eats it fast.

This is too bad, because I like to cook with it, and the flavor of this home-grown garlic is better than anything we can buy in the supermarket. I figure I will order cloves of different types in late August to plant in the fall in our raised beds. I am beginning to think we can't raise too much garlic.

The beer traps I have set out for the slugs have claimed some victims, so that effort has been a success. I've harvested most of my radishes, but I've been spraying what's left with Neem oil because something (caterpillars? I don't see any) have been chewing on them pretty badly. The spinach is looking OK, but something has started to attack it, so I sprayed it, too, just in case.

My Romaine lettuce is the perfect size for picking. We need to be eating some salads this week. I planted more lettuce where I've been pulling up Romaine and where the radishes have been pulled up.

Something, I suspect a rabbit, has eaten all the leaves off my precious young eggplant and a young "healthy pepper" plant. We have three dogs, so I gathered up all the dog hair I could find and spread some around that bed. I've read that rabbits don't like the smell of dog hair. Time will tell.

**Update: we later learned that the eggplant-eating culprit might have been a crayfish or "land lobster," as I called it.  I can't prove it, but the damage to the garden stopped after Don found and killed the crayfish.

My Virginia Garden Late May 2012

Square-Foot Raised Beds, May 27, 2012, Southeastern VA

My raised beds are doing better than I ever dreamed. If you want to see what I have planted where, my online garden planner has more details. The asparagus is coming up beautifully, and the beds are coming alive and green with vegetation.

Asparagus Bed

 The beds are mostly vegetables but I interspersed flowers to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects. I've put some flowering potted plants near the beds for the same reason. I've already started to harvest some Cherry Belle radishes, both the greens for salads and the roots themselves. The Romaine lettuce is ready for some selective picking of their outer leaves. I've mulched most plants, except the lettuces, since mulch attracts slugs. Most plants have been mulched with a mix of chicken manure, vegetable scraps, straw, and other items from my Compostumbler, but some of the squares of asparagus with white clover. The clover is an experiment. I suspect it is a bad idea, especially since it is the first year for the asparagus. I read in an article that researchers tried this and the asparagus produced thinner spears than the control plants and reduced yields:

 Unsuppressed white Dutch clover established

at asparagus planting controlled weeds and provided
N over time to the asparagus in a Wisconsin
study, but reduced yield significantly. Establishing
the clover in the second year or third year of an
asparagus planting would be more effective.

Experimental asparagus with clover as living mulch

Unfortunately, I sowed the clover with the asparagus in the first year. Everything I've read suggests that Dutch White Clover is a good idea under tomatoes and pole beans, although it does compete with the taller plants for water. Water has been plentiful so far this year so I will allow the experiment to continue. ***Update or 7/18/12: The asparagus has grown in so thick, it has smothered most of the clover for lack of light. I suspect this is just as well. The clover adds nitrogen to the soil, and if it's dead, it can't compete with the asparagus for water in the summer heat we are having. I was afraid the clover would take over my vegetable beds, but it never did.

I read somewhere a recommendation of sowing winter peas and oats in late September over cleaned asparagus beds as a winter cover crop. The Sustainable Agriculture Network recommends winter rye for the same purpose in its free publication, "Managing Cover Crops Profitably."

Squash Bed

Something, either slugs or caterpillars, has been munching heavily on my radish tops. I plan to try some beer traps in case it is the former. The radishes may be acting as a trap crop, however, because whatever the pest is, it has been mostly leaving my young spinach and lettuces alone. I'd much prefer to lose radish greens than the other salad greens. I also tried spraying a little Neem oil on the radishes and on the few lettuces that are seeing damage.

Romaine lettuce

Basil with leaf mulch

Basil with compost

Baby spinach

We have lot of trees on our property. This has both its good and bad points. The main bad point is that we accidentally located the garden in a spot that does not get enough sunlight for fruiting crops such as tomatoes. To give ourselves credit, there are so many trees it is hard to find a truly sunny spot. Don plans to trim trees and limbs to improve the sunlight. He can't do it fast enough for me!


The "up" side to having so many limbs is that they produce lots of leaves. Our oak tree also sheds flowers in the spring (and tons of acorns for the squirrels). Yes, the leaves are a plus! We continually shake our heads at neighbors who bag them up and leave them at the curb.

We have a terrific lawnmower. We can either use it as a mulching mower, and mulch DRY leaves and oak flowers into the soil, or we can use the bagger that comes with the mower to shred the leaves to use as mulch. Right now most of my garden is mulched with compost  or leaves or a combination of both.


Two words of warning: be sure the leaves are brown (dry). Be sure compost is well-aged. Squash and potatoes, however, will grow more easily in less-than-optimal compost than other plants.

So far I love pole beans! This is the first year I've ever grown them, and I love how quickly they grow up the teepee-style trellises I have put up for them. But I wouldn't have planted them so close to the tomatoes if I'd realized how little sunlight my gardens would get. Oh, well.

Tomato, Pepper, and Pole Bean Bed

  Note to self: I have GOT to pay more attention to my garden planner. I originally planned to grow two tomatillos. I think I read they pollinate and produce better that way. I had two growing beautifully. Wouldn't you know it, I pulled one up? Aargh! At least I'll have more room for squash, since I am growing more than I originally planned in the same space. The square-foot method isn't well suited to squashes, melons, etc., although you can try growing them vertically, which is what I plan to do.

I will post some pictures of my flowers planted for biodiversity and attracting pollinators below. Some double as edibles or herbs.

Nasturtiums are spicy and edible

Marigolds are welcome in any garden

Forget Me Nots

Potted Thyme and Cilantro Flowering

The Little Tomato That Could, End of May

The Little Tomato's first fruit

It's been a month since I've updated my posts on the "Little Tomato That Could." This is a little plant that came up as a volunteer in one of my outdoor pots in November of 2011. Don Burke, my then-fiance, now husband, likes to rescue forlorn-looking creatures, and I've rarely seen a plant that looks as pathetic as that poor tomato did last fall. He stopped me from pulling it up. He nurtured it all fall and winter with reluctant help from me. The plant has gotten a little brittle, and the last time Don moved it, about half of it broke and fell off. Ever the optimist, Don took one of the broken vines and stuck it in some dirt in another pot. That part is still alive, but I'm not sure for how long.

The original "Little Tomato" has bounced back from the rough handling. It is even producing one early and large tomato, which is in that green-turning-yellow stage that tomatoes reach as they begin to ripen. I hope it turns red and that it avoids blossom end rot. The moisture content has been hard to manage in the pot that Don has been growing the plant in, especially with our summer weather so hot and dry. I don't have high hopes for it. I already see a little sunken area in the green tomato that looks like the beginning of the problem.

The Little Tomato That Could

The Little Tomato last fall

More Reasons to Grow Your Own

Some states have greatly tightened the noose on illegal immigration. The result is that crops are left to rot in the fields for a lack of skilled workers:

http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/05/15/farm-labor-shortages

Growers are moving toward more mass-commodity crops that can be harvested mechanically and away from organic, sustainable methods.

Even with the high unemployment rates, Americans are not stepping up to take these jobs:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44981872/ns/us_news-life/#.T7OOEFKqa25

They cannot make decent money at it, they do not have the skills, and they are not physically fit enough to work like a skilled farmhand.

These farmhands have skills because many have been toughened by farm work since they were seven or eight years old.

That's right!

Children have been working in the fields with their parents to provide income for their families. While most of us in the U.S. have children who go to school most of the year, the migrants' children are in the fields, harvesting our produce, making less than minimum wage, and facing pesticide exposure and other dangers we wouldn't THINK of exposing children to. Farm work is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. An estimated 400,000 children in the United States face these abuses, and it's perfectly legal due to an outdated law from 1939.

A new documentary, "The Harvest/La Cosecha," is bringing these abuses before the public's eye.

These are yet more reasons to eat locally, seasonally, and to grow as much of our own food as we can. One of the foods left to rot for lack of workers was asparagus. Well, let's grow asparagus in our own back yards and take control over our food supply and the conditions under which we grow it!

Wool "Natural Growers Pack" for Container Gardens

Portulacas thrive in hot, dry conditions (source)

I bought another impulse item from my online local-foods coop this week.

My understanding husband has taken in stride my purchase of red wrigglers for vermicomposting and wool dryer balls to replace fabric softeners in our dryer. But this week he actually raised his eyebrows and looked askance at me. There's a first time for everything, I guess.

The $8.00 purchase was a "Natural Growers Pack," a "sheep manure compost fertilizer and water retention system" from Breeze Hill Farm of Powhatan, VA. What arrives is a gallon zip-lock bag filled with unwashed, untreated sheep's wool and a small packet of composted sheep manure to use as fertilizer. It is meant to be used in container gardens. According to the packet:

Our product reduces the need to water the plant 

and provides one of the best all natural organic fertilizers 

available to feed your plants for the entire growing season.

I always have trouble keeping outdoor potted plants sufficiently watered in our hot, dry Virginia summers, so I am hoping the sheep's wool will help. And anyone who reads my blog knows I'm a big fan of composted manure! The directions are to line the bottom of the container with the wool, mix the sheep compost in with the potting soil, add the soil on top of the wool, then add the plant. 

That's what I did, except I sprinkled some seeds on top of the soil in my flower box instead of transplanting plants. The seeds are for dwarf phlox plants and portulacas, also called moss rose. Both are hardy, and I am hoping they will grow in the same container. The sheep's wool took up so much room that I wonder if there's actually enough soil in there for the plants. I'll provide an update on how the system works after my flowers are established.

Update on 7/21/12: The wool does seem to keep the planter moist for more time than I would expect, especially in our unbelievably hot summer weather, but my plants have failed to thrive. the phlox has all died. I am not sure if it is something I am doing wrong that is unrelated to the wool "growers pack" or not. If others have any experience with this growing system, I would appreciate the feedback.

 Update on 8/25/12: I moved the flower box into full sun, and the portulacas are thriving and blooming beautifully. I wish I'd planted more of them. And the soil does stay moist longer than I expect. I'm not sure what happened to the phlox, but the moss rose seems to be making up for it. Overall I'd say the experiment has been a success. I'd try it again.

Phlox (source)