The Hen Fortress

Done for the winter.  The upstairs window openings are covered with plastic sheeting, to keep the cold wind out and keep rain from coming in.  The hens are moved in.  They have 2 new pullet friends - sex-linked.  They won't be laying for 3 months.  There was some initial role assertion by the normally placid Leghorns, but now they are cooing like pigeons.

The dogs won't be there to keep guard all of the time, but it's looking secure.

I still need to paint the door frame.  The upstairs section will need work next Spring.  I'm thinking they will have a balcony to view their realm.

View through the front door. They have a roost, a private laying booth made from recycle bins, and a screened-off food storage area. There is a little door-within-the-door for summer coming and going.

They enjoy the dandelion greens, which make for orange yolks and more flavorful eggs.  Dandelions are growing like crazy now.

The view from the other entrance, showing the doors into the laying booths. Below the laying booth, there is a plastic bin for chicken feed.  To the right, screen doors to access the feeder and waterer.

The Last Tree-Planting of the Year

The big box store had a close out on trees. Not many there, but $8.00 a tree. I debated for a while, and made another trip there. If not for the beekeeping plans, I would not have done this. But lindens are famous for sweet honey. The leaves are edible, so pruned branches can be fed to the hens, as I already do with grapes.

Similar to the other recent Linden. All are the Greenspire cultivar. Grafted trees. Tilia cordata. The trees are a bit lopsided. I can correct that with some corrective pruning and staking over the next one to two years. Aside from that, perfection is not needed. It's just my preference. These are east of the Chicken house, so won't be much for shading the hens. But they will give some privacy and food. The bees will find them here easily.

Like some of the other big box store trees, and some nursery trees, these were balled-and-burlapped trees, placed in containers in chopped tree bark. I'm surprised at how little root growth there was. A few roots are winding around the pot, but not much.

Even though the burlap and twine were soft and  nearly degraded, I removed as much as I could.  That was partly because I wanted to see into the original rootball, looking for winding roots.  There weren't any.  I'm surprised at how minimal the roots were.  Maybe that's a characteristic for this species or cultivar, or the treatment they had.

This isn't bad at all for a left-over tree that's been in the lot all spring and summer.  Most experts would recommend against buying these trees, now, but I think it was OK for these.

The Linden that I bought mid summer had more winding roots.  It was also a bigger tree, which may be why.

I pruned a minimum of roots to unwind them. Very minimal. I teased out the rest using my gloved hand. It was easy, more shaking and jiggling than pulling and scraping.  The roots separated easily.  That will give the tree a better future.

Even though I haven't decided on whether mycorrhizal inocula will make a difference, I added some.  The "Plant Success" product was discussed yesterday.  I sprinkled it directly on the roots. When the soil was about half way filled in, I planted bulbs, added some more inoculant, and filled in the rest. The bulbs are for fun, and I think moles may not like alliums and daffodils. So it's a test.

It was interesting to look at the tree label.  They recommended filling in, with a soil / amendment mixture.  Most experts recommend against using a soil amendment.  Just the native soil.  This is a change for me, but I finally got the message.  The reason is, the roots will need to grow into the surrounding soil, and not be over-stimulated by amendments, to wind around in the original hole.

It's been raining, but not for the past couple of days. The soil was easy to dig, didn't clump into gloppy clods, and was crumbly like a moist chocolate cake. So I didn't firm it down with my foot. That would be too tight. I did water each tree in with about 6 gallons of water, 3 trips of 2 gallons for each tree. Then some compost mulch, and they are ready for winter.  The water drained in a couple of minutes.  Very fast.  I'm not worried here about clay or compaction.

This summer I was excited for Fall to come, so I could plant trees, and vines, and bulbs, and fall planted vegetables. Now I'm anxious for Spring to come. For these trees, I'm confidant they will get through the winter fine, but will they bloom? I want that.  Will they tolerate next summer's heat?

I think they will do OK.  I'm glad I planted them without waiting for the Spring shipments.  Way ahead of next Spring's trees - bigger, an extra season of growth, and much, much, much better price.  Can't go wrong with a nice 8 foot tree for $8.00.

First Seed Orders for 2013 Season.

I've been thinking about it for too long, so went ahead and ordered most of the seeds for next season. It's not so far away. Some cold tolerant plants may be planted in Feb or March. I concentrated on plants that were as short-season as possible. I wanted ones that I could save seeds from for the future, so they need to be open pollinated, nonhybrid varieties. Where possible, I chose plants that have high likelihood to grow with cool summer nights and short summer season.

 Here's my list from Seedsavers.org:
 Watermelon, Petite Yellow to plant in May or June. Small fruits, 65-80 days.
Pepper, Santa Fe Grande, 75-85 days. May use row cover tunnel.
Pepper, Hot Portugal, 65-75 days. I usually get a few peppers each year. May use row cover tunnel. Lettuce, Tennis Ball, 50 days.
Pea, Asparagus, 60-75 days. Something new to try.
Tomato, Dester OG, 70-80 days. This looks a bit like the pink Ponderosas I grew as a boy.
Tomato, Japanese Trifele Black, 70-80 days.
Tomato, Earliana, 60-70 days
Swiss Chard, Five Color Silverbee, 50-60 days. I don't know if we'll like it. Probably. Otherwise, there's the chickens to feed.
Radish, Cincinnati Market, 25-30 days
Radish, French Breakfast, 20-30 days
Watermelon, Blacktail Mountain. 65-75 days, regionally adapted (N. Idaho),
Melon, Minnesota Midget, 60-75 days. Early, North adapted, small size melons.
Salsify, Mammoth Sandwich Island, 120 days. Long season. Something different.
Okra, Clemson Spineless, 50-64 days. Needs warm. May use row cover tunnel.
Carrot, Scarlet Nantes, 65-75 days.
Carrot, Paris Market, 50-68 days. Round balls, like radishes.
Beet, Detroit Dark Red, 60-65 days.

I forgot to order Butternut squash and a couple of other things, but this is most of my planned kitchen garden.

I also ordered a few items from Sustainableseeds.com
Parisian Carrot Seeds - oops, duplicate
Chamomile, Roman, experiment, for edging kitchen garden beds
Chamomile, German Herb, experiment, for edging kitchen garden beds.
True Lavender Seeds, ditto. We may want to grow a lot more lavender - bees love it, it's dry tolerant, and smells great.
White Dutch Clover, mix into grass in my little orchard.
Organic Purple Top White Globe Turnip, heirloom, at least back to 1881. 57 days.

In my seed collection I have Roma bush beans, a dwarf Snowpea (forget the name). Also saved seeds for yellow wax pencil bush beans. And lots of various pepper and tomato varieties.  Those may be too old. I'll need to check them for germination.

From Territorial Seeds, I ordered Rhizobium inoculum for beans and peas. I'll probably add a few items, not much. This looks like a lot but the planting will go fast.

Kitchen Garden Plan

This is the plan for the kitchen garden for next year.  I used a high-tech method called "writing on an old mailing envelope using a pen".  Bio-powered system.

The three beds on the eastern side are planted as noted. When the alliums are done, in July, I can prep those beds for crop rotation, adding in compost and start fall-planted radishes, cabbages, turnips, mesclun. Another option is late-planted bush beans. I'll build the two late-winter beds next. That will give the coli/compost/supplement mix a chance to settle and "cure" before planting. Probably late feb. Those are fast growing. When they are done, the warm-requiring solanums (eggplant, chilis, tomatoes) and Okra can go in. The taller ones will go to the back. I can build the other beds through the winter and prep them in early Spring, March and April, before they need to be planted in May or June. By then I'll be tired of building raised beds and, especially, hauling soil to them. The soil hauling is heavy work.

One great thing about planning on paper is, I can continue changing it as I think of better choices.

The raised beds now. The soil pile and compost pile are in approx locations for two of the beds. I hope people don't think someone is buried there.

It's great to have company, even if they are sleeping.

Mycorhizal Inoculant

I've been reading up on the soil "world wide web" of fungal mycelia. These organisms benefit plants and trees in many ways, and connect plants to one another. They transfer nutrition between plants and trees, bring nutrition from otherwise unavailable sources in the soil, improve root growth, stimulate top growth, improve drought resistance, and improve disease resistance. Apparently, disturbance of soil can reduce or eliminate some mycorrhizal mycelial webs, which take a long time to regenerate. Those disturbance include plowing, tilling, soil compaction, fertilizing, and pesticides. The marketing argument for inoculants is, they replenish the mycelial web at the place where it is most needed, the plant root. Technically, once inoculum is added, it should not be needed again.

Plant Success mycorrhizal inoculant list of species. I bought via Amazon.  The advantage is the variety of species.  Different plants benefit from different fungal species, with a lot of overlap.  By providing a variety of species, the thinking is that the ones that can become symbionts with the particular garden plant, will grow, and the others wont hurt anything.  Some plants can use multiple species.  Some mycorrhiza associate with certain plants and not others.

In order to apply at the roots, inoculant is best used at time of planting.  The granules are sprinkled on the plant roots, or in the soil that is then applied to the plant roots.   The alternative is to dig small holes around the plant and sprinkle inoculant into the holes, with the expectation that once against the roots, the mycelium will spread from root to root.

Mykos mycorrhizal inoculant.  I did not see a list of species.  I also could not find that on the website.  From other sites on the internet, it looks like Mykos is one species, Globus intraradices TRI 801, 80 spores per gram.  Reading on mycorhiza, Globus intraradices  is not so likely to benefit woody trees like this hazelnut.  I should have used Plant Success for this.  A lot of other plants should be happy with the G. intraradices so I will use up the package for them.  The main issue is that G. intraradices is an "endo" mycorrhiza, which lives within the root.  Many plants benefit from endo, but apparently a lot of woody trees benefit from "ecto" myorrhiza, which live surrounding the root.

Mushrooms.  I am not adventurous enough to eat them.  This part of the yard has a number of old, nearly decomposed, tree stumps.  There are mushrooms throughout the yard.  There appear to be multiple varieties.

Mushrooms are the fruiting structures of a mature mycorrhizal mycelium, responding to weather or other stimuli to grow and produce spores.  There are thousands of species.

This is one mushroom, near a spruce tree.  There are more of the same type, near other spruce trees.  Which leads me to suspect some species specificity.  Big mushroom.

Seeing mushrooms around the yard, makes me wonder if adding mycorrhizal inoculant is like taking coals to Newcastle.  Maybe.  The raised beds are, by definition, highly disturbed soils.  The first two were filled largely with granular soil from the hundreds of molehills that had baked in the sun.  That was easy to handle and they needed to be removed so mowing would not cause big dust-bowl quality clouds of soil.  So no active mycelia, I'm sure, but maybe lots of spores.   Even though about 1/4 of the volume of those beds was compost, I don't know the mycorrhizal content of the compost.  I suspect this compost's population is mainly bacterial and actinomycete, not mycorrhizal fungi.  No way for me to know, and I don't think anything is hurt by adding some inoculant.

Another argument could be made that the most adapted, most likely to survive and flourish, mycorhiza are the ones that were already growing here.  Valid argument.  I view adding inoculant as a boost for newly planted trees, shrubs, and garden plants.  Since I use lots of mulch and add lots of organic matter, this will be a "one time" effort.

I suspect that some (much?) of the market for mycorrhizal inoculant is in the home production of certain herbal products that I have no interest in growing and don't want to know about.   All I want from it is better trees, shrubs, flowers, and vegetables.