🧅 Onions … Revisited
It feels like our onions read our last update and took offense. It wasn’t a week after I sent out our last “In and Around our Garden” update that the onions started to bulb. I guess they are subscribed to the newsletter? Or just needed a few more days to remember it was peak summer and the days are longer now (which is what triggers their bulbing). So to refresh your memory, I planted these onions as little bulbs back in early November and Abigail, a subscriber who was mentioned in the last letter planted hers in February of this year. It looks like both times worked well. My initial thought right now is that if I waited until February to plant, I’d risk the ground being frozen. However, February is when you can first start direct seeding crops into the garden. These crops include potatoes, peas, radishes, and parsley. So adding onions to this group makes great sense.
Anyone else have some experience growing onions? If so, please comment and let us know your tips and tricks!
🐔 Chickens
Since moving into the city, we haven’t had chickens. Until this year. My dad, in his classic style, found a small chicken coop on the side of the road and after repairing it, brought it up to our house from south Alabama. It had been our intention since moving into the city to get a few chickens, but life has a way of scrunching up our intentions and tossing them to the side. So it helps to have others nudge you along. The repaired little chicken coop was a great motivator and it wasn’t long after getting it that I had a chicken run (confined, outdoor space) attached to it and 4 chickens inside. We got our chickens from friends who wanted to downsize their flock and offered us some mature hens to hold us over until their son could raise us up some younger ones.
If someone were to ask me about chickens, I wouldn’t make it long before mentioning how critical it is for a chicken owner to understand the idea of using a deep bedding system and how it works. Without this understanding, it is likely that the chickens will make a mess of their space (and yours), smell terribly, and add a lot of unnecessary work for their owners.
So what is a deep bedding management system? A deep bedding system just means that wherever the chickens are kept, they always have a lot of bedding for their excrement to fall into. Whenever the bedding needs replenishing, instead of cleaning out the coop or run, you simply add in new, fresh bedding on top of the old bedding. once or twice a year, you can remove the bedding and start anew. This old bedding will have had time to decompose and will make an excellent fertilizer and amendment to your garden and other planting areas. You can use straw, old hay, chopped leaves, woodchips, sawdust (untreated), or old dry grass clippings. Each of these materials has different qualities and pros/cons. I prefer to use primarily straw and two materials that I have readily available: chopped leaves and grass clippings.
Most people, when they think of a chicken coop, they think smelly and dusty. While you can’t do much for the dust, you can definitely do something about the smell. Use a lot of bedding and keep your bedding replenished often. The carbon in the bedding mixes with the nitrogen in the chicken waste and creates an environment for microbes to thrive. These microbes help break down the bedding and the chicken waste and keep the smells to an absolute minimum. For instance, we have 4 chickens in a run that is roughly 9’ x 5’. (Most sources will say you need around 10 square feet per bird if the chicken is going to stay in the run their entire lives. Personally, I believe if you keep your chickens in a confined space, 10 square feet is the minimum amount of space you should have and using a deep bedding method is a must!) Our chickens haven’t left their space since being put in and there is no noticeable smell coming from their area. Neighbors and bystanders have confirmed!
Another aspect of using the deep bedding method is it provides constant entertainment for your chickens. Chickens like to scratch the ground in order to stir loose bugs, spiders, worms, seeds, and other critters that they will then quickly gobble up. A constant supply of bedding gives the chickens an environment that is perfect for their instinctual act of scratching. Without bedding in their run, the ground will quickly become barren and any material on the surface will become matted down. This leaves minimal incentive to scratch around, little room for critters to hide, and in turn becomes a messy, smelly wasteland of waste and mud.
🌳 Orchard Visit
Wendell and I went out to the farm recently and put some mulch around the base of the fruit trees. Ideally, this would have been done when we planted them! Overall, I am really pleased with how the trees are doing. I will do a full accounting this fall before winter, but as of now it looks like we have only lost 2, maybe 3 of the 26 trees we planted. I’m pleased with that.
🏵️ Flowers
Taking pictures of flowers, particularly Dahlias, hasn’t gotten old yet. Speaking of Dahlias… They are easy to grow. We planted our bulbs last August, I think. Which is late. And we didn’t dig them up this winter, which many people say you should. They survived wintergeddon and are now crushing it. Some are 6’ + tall.
If you have questions or thoughts on anything in this letter, I’d love to hear from you! Comment below or email me at Taylor@acommonlife.co .
Until next time,
Blessings to you and yours,
Taylor M.
I love hearing about the chickens. I have seen several posts about 'frozen' treats for chickens to help with summer heat. You should try some.