Garden Status for August 2014

August has been an interesting month for the garden.  The tomatoes are pretty much done.  I've taken out most of those plants.  I have a few that are hanging on, but they aren't producing much.  I put in a second round of tomatoes some time in June.  They're still growing, but they aren't producing yet either.  I probably got them in too late.

The tomatillos didn't produce this year.  The plants themselves didn't do that well either.  I'm not sure what happened.  I've had a lot of luck with them in past years.  Basically I ended up with a whole lot of beans, and some peppers.  The peppers are doing OK, but again, not as well as previous years.

Beans, August 10.

I grew pole beans for the first time this year.  They really produce a lot.  I like the fact that I can stand up to pick them.

One old lonely tomato plant hanging on and one young tomato that isn't producing yet.

Peppers - August 14

Purple Peppers - August 14

Hot yellow peppers - August 14

I planted beans under the lamp post and didn't realize that they were pole beans.  They grew all over the shepherds hook until it bent over.

More beans - August 15.

Even more beans - August 17.

 

This is the start of some kale and rainbow chard for the fall.

Carrots - August 20.

Beans - August 20.

Seriously, the pole beans produce a lot of beans.  August 24.

Bean and pepper harvest on August 26.

I'm not sure how much more I'm going to get from the garden this year.  I think the peppers will be producing for a while, but the beans are close to being done.  I didn't do a real good job of starting seeds and getting stuff in for a second harvest.  I have a few kale plants in the ground for the fall and I have more seeds going in the garage.  I'll probably transfer them to the garden in a few weeks.

Another update on the new chickens.

I went out to close up the coop and put away the feed tonight like I always do.  I checked the pen with the new chicks and much to my surprise they weren't in there!  My first reaction was panic.  I didn't know if they got under the fence and were in the woods.  Maybe they were under the coop.  Maybe they were somewhere in the yard.  No.  They were in the coop with the rest of the birds.  Go figure....

 

I hope this works out OK.  She's locked in there with the rest of the layers until I open the coop tomorrow morning.  I haven't seen her interact much with them.  There was some fighting initially, but now I think she pretty much just stays away from them.  I could be wrong about that.  I'm not here much during the day to see them interact. 

Will we get more baby rabbits?

My daughter successfully raised and sold a litter or rabbits last spring.  We didn't want to have the female pregnant through the summer, so we didn't try again right away.  Since it's the end of August and summer is almost over, we thought that now was a good time to try again.

We put the male in the pen for a little while so he could establish that it was his area.  Then we put his wife in there with him.  It didn't take them long to do what rabbits do.

This is the most graphic picture you're going to get.

I'd guess that they were in there together for 15-20 minutes.  Now we just have to wait a few weeks to find out if it worked.

New chicks after one week.

We've had the new chicks for a week now.   We didn't have any issues with the hen accepting them as her own.  We've been keeping them in a pen on their own so the other layers get used them being around. 

So tonight I decided to prop up the front of the pen to let them out.  Guess what happened?

Our Rhode Island Red chicken promptly went  into the pen and started eating the chick feed. 

I buy them soy-free, GMO-free, organic feed and she decides to eat the starter feed for the chicks.  This was a first.  When I first got the soy-free stuff, I put it out along side the Purina pellet feed that I had been using.  They ignored the Purina pellets and only ate the soy-free feed.  My wife thinks that she's just showing the new birds who is boss.  That could be the case.  She's at the top of the pecking order.

 The new hen and her chicks did venture out of the pen, but they didn't go far.

Momma hen is very confrontational and is ready to defend her babies!  She's spazzed out at the dog more then a few times this week.

The hen and her chicks made their way to feeder under the coop.  I don't know if they ate any of the feed there or not.

I'm going to start letting them out every day from now on.  There were a few skirmishes between the mother hen and some of the layers, but I think she can hold her own. 

An easy way to check the water level in your rain barrel.

I've already written numerous times about some the challenges with rain barrels.  (How to keep debris out.  How to still use them when it doesn't rain.  How to keep them from overflowing when they aren't the same height.)  I still have the issue of now knowing how full they are.  I could always just unscrew the lid and look, but that's a nuisance.  I'd also like to be able to move water from the barrels in my back yard to the barrels in my front yard (using only gravity).

In a previous post I put a clear vertical tube in my garden.  That worked, but only if I was in my garden and only if I remembered to look at it.  It still wasn't ideal.  What it didn't offer was a gauge.  It was easy to tell if it was empty, but I couldn't really tell how close the barrel was to being full. 

Anyway, I decided to use the same idea but expand on it.  I got a section of clear tubing, attached it to a garden hose, and ran it vertically along a fence post.

Then I attached the garden hose to the rain barrels at the front of my house.

Front yard rain barrels which are attached to the drip irrigation that waters the garden.

I opened the valve on the barrel and allowed it to fill the hose.  Then I put a mark on the fence showing the height of the water when the barrel is nearly full.

Then I took the hose off of the barrel in the front yard and attached it to the barrel in the back yard.

I marked the post with the height of the water for the back yard barrel and measured the difference between it and the front yard barrel.  It was 12.5" (meaning that the back barrel is a foot lower than the front one).  Then I moved the garden hose back to the barrel in the front yard.

This clear tube along with these two marks tell me how I can move water between the barrels.  Water will flow downhill (from high to low).  So if the water level in the front yard barrels is lower than the height of the water in the back yard, I can move the water from the back yard to the front yard.  If the water is higher than the line on the post I can move water from the front yard to the back yard. 

Water level in the front yard barrels is lower than the back yard barrels.

Moving the water is as simple as turning a valve.

The valve on the right connects the front yard barrels to the back yard barrels.

Since the back yard barrels are lower, it's impossible to move all of the water in them to the front yard (without an additional energy source like a pump). 

Back yard barrel level after it reaches the same level as the barrels in the front yard.

When front yard barrels got empty I marked the post with that level as well.

Empty barrel level mark.

Empty barrel

This isn't a perfect solution.  I still have a garden hose running across my yard.  I'll probably end up relocating the clear tube to someplace else, but for now it's good enough. 

I'm real happy with the fact that this allows me to get a few more days of irrigation in my garden without having to fill the barrels from the house water. 

Adding more chickens.

My neighbor, the one who gave us our first batch of chickens, found a good deal on chicks and ordered some.  She ask if we wanted any and of course we said yes.  I told her that I'd take 4.  That way we'd end up with an even flock of 10.  To make things even more interesting she offered us a broody hen to raise the chicks.

I had planned on putting the hen and chicks in my original chicken tractor.  I attempted to move it into my yard and it fell apart.  I didn't realize how much it had rotted.  The wire mesh on it is still good so I'll salvage that for another project.  I had to use chicken tractor v2.0 instead.  That was fine.  I just want to keep them contained until the current flock gets used to them being there.

Chickens have no night vision.  So it made sense to make they hand-off at night.  My neighbor came over around 10:00 with a cranky hen and five 1-day old chicks.  That was one more than we asked for.  I can't complain about that!  The hen was in no mood to be put in the tractor.  She wouldn't stay still so we could put the chicks under her.  I got a box and put some pine shavings in it.  Then we put in the chicks, sat the hen on top of them.  Then the box went into the shed for the night.

I went out to check on them the next morning.  The hen thought that she had hatched eggs.  And...  She was not too happy to see me.  She squawked a lot.  I picked up the box and moved her and the chicks into the chicken tractor.  They stuck together.  The chicks thought she was their mom.

This picture was taken right after I put them in there.

The hen continued to squawk loudly for quite a while.  I could even hear her inside.  I can only imagine what my next door neighbors must have thought.  Luckily the squawking eventually stopped. 

One chick slipped out.  The rest are under the hen.

This is a new experience for me.  When I raised chicks in the past, I kept them in the garage under heat lamps.  I never had a hen to do the work for me.  I have to check the food and water, but she's taking care of the temperature.  I don't have to adjust a lamp higher or lower, or change the bulb from 100w to 75w to 60w.  I won't have to change out the messy pine shavings and the garage isn't going to stink! 

The hen is taking her job seriously.  My dog came out to sniff around the pen and she freaked out.  She was jumping and flapping her wings and had all of her feathers puffed out.  The dog seemed confused.  None of the other chickens have ever done that.  I got her away from the pen and back into the yard.  Then the hen calmed down. 

I plan on keeping the hen and chicks in the tractor for a week.  That should give them some time to get used to being here and it'll give the current birds time to adjust as well.  At that point I'll prop up the tractor just like I did for the last round of broilers.  Then they'll be able to explore as they please.