5 Acres & A Dream

May 26, 2024

Garden Notes: May 2024

Rainfall

3rd: 2.17"
6th: 1.57"
8th: 0.13"
9th: 2.4"
13-14th: 0.92"
15th: 0.04"
17th: 0.12"
18th: 0.01"
19th: 0.69"
23rd: 0.15"
25th: 0.09"
27th: 0.4"
Total: 8.69 inches

Temperature

range of nighttime lows: 48 to 65°F (9 to 18°C)
range of daytime highs: 65 to 86°F (18 to 30°C)

Weather Notes

Hail on the 6th
Very wet month, with quite a few days of drizzle with no accumulation.
Because the temps are mild, moisture remains in the ground and doesn't evaporate right out (one of our worst problems in hot summer).

Planted

pole beans, Cornfield
peanuts
buckwheat
summer squash, Tatume
okra, Clemson Spineless
sunflowers, Russian Mammoth
cantaloupe, Hale's Best
pearl millet
collards
pepper plants

Harvested

lettuce
strawberries
snow peas
wild lettuce
chickweed
kale
mulberries
oregano
asparagus
red raspberries
peppermint
greenhouse potatoes
hopniss
horseradish root
turnip

Garden Photos

Except there are no actual photos of the garden!

Early May meant a flush of strawberries, and so our first
strawberry shortcake of the year with homegrown whipped cream.

Edible pod peas and red raspberries.

Pea and peanut salad with a dollop of mayonnaise.

Greenhouse potato harvest. Not a lot, but I didn't
plant a lot. I'd call it a successful experiment!

Mulberries

Mulberry pancakes

And then, since Dan has been talking about pineapple, I thought I'd make him an upside-down cake, substituting mulberries for those yucky candied cherries. Unfortunately, when I turned it out of the pan . . .

Upside-down cake fail

I think this is because I cut back on the sugar and butter, because I cut back on sugar and butter in all my cakes. That works for the cake, but didn't give me enough sauce for the pineapple and berries. So it stuck to the pan! But it still tasted good and I learned a lesson for next time.

Your turn. How does your garden grow?

Garden Notes: May 2024 © May 2024

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

May 17, 2024

Chaos in the Hen House

What is it with chickens? There can be any number of perfectly good empty nest boxes available, but they want the one that another bird is already in! And they are quite persistent about it. They will push on in and sit on the current occupants head, even pecking her if necessary, to get her to move. If the invading hen happens to be one of Rooster Schooster's favorites, he joins in with all manner of squawking!

Of course, when Schooster sets up a fuss, we have to go check. Even when we're pretty sure it's just over nest box squabbling, it could also be a snake or rat, both of which are egg and chick stealers. One time, we had a skunk brazenly walk into the coop in broad daylight and kill chicks! So, reasonable doubt requires making sure everything is okay.

Egg laying is bird business, which means that none of them is interested in (or compliant with) the humans' opinions and solutions to the problem. Our efforts to sort things out are completely ignored, and the battle for the nest boxes continues with the sense of business as usual. For the most part it actually isn't a problem. It becomes a problem, however, when the occupying hen/duck/turkey is broody and wants to hatch some eggs.

Broodies can be pretty persistent, but when they are successfully routed out of their nest by a rude chicken, they move and then stay there. This results in the eggs being abandoned which means none of them hatches. Our solution has become to keep an eye out and then move the eggs to the broodie's new next.

This solution points to another problem however. That is, now there are more eggs so that they are at different stages of development and often become too numerous for the broody to properly cover and incubate.

I'm guessing that at about this point, many of you are wondering why we don't use an incubator and skip the fiasco in the hen house. There are several reasons for this, which are logical to us, although they may not make sense to others.

We like having a mixed age flock because it helps keep egg production at a consistent level. Old hens eventually lay less, while younger hens lay the most. With a mixed age flock we can keep six hens and have a surplus of eggs to share year after year.
Consequently, we don't need a specific number of new chicks every year. We don't do the replacement flock thing, so just a trickle of new chicks each year works well for us.
It's infinitely easier to let the birds hatch and rear their own young! This is nature's way, after all, and it relieves us of the accompanying chores of the job. Plus, we firmly believe that babies deserve to have their own mother.

So, speaking of baby poultry and mothers, here is the first hatch of the year:

Yup, our turkey hen hatched out two duck eggs and they are all perfectly content with the arrangement. The added bonus for the ducklings is that the chickens—which tend to be ruthlessly mean toward newcomers—absolutely leave Jenny's babies alone. They are all quite intimidated by her, so nobody messes with her young 'uns!

Sadly, we lost one duckling when it drowned in the big water dish. But the other is doing just fine.

Currently we have two broody ducks and a broody hen in the nest boxes. We're waiting to see what's next.

Chaos in the Hen House © May 2024

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

May 11, 2024

Gate: A Keyhole Garden Preliminary

I showed you this photo last time.

Where the new African keyhole garden is going to be.

Compare that to this photo from before we built the greenhouse.

Between the bushes and pile of bricks is a gate. The little orange surveyors flags mark the proposed corners of the greenhouse, so the gate had to come out. It was replaced with the back wall of the greenhouse.

The gate was handy for going from back to front yards with a wheelbarrow or lawnmower. Needless to say, we've missed having it. Now, with bricks for the keyhole garden to haul around, it seemed like the time to put the gate back in.