What Did You Do In The Garden?

We've been working on the new garden beds. So far, we have 2 new ones in, and the strawberry bed has been redone. Right now we're just putting down the first row of cinder blocks. Once all the bases are down, I'll come back and put in the 2nd row.

I've started putting the layers down. Cardboard first, then leaves and then compost over
them. Watering between each layer. Still looking for some good top soil. Really don't want to buy the bagged soil.

I've also dumped 10 large loads of leaves/pine straw in the chicken run. Put another 7 loads in the coop. The chickens sure do love digging through it all.

We also put up my leaf mold cage using chicken wire & Tposts. I'll start putting leaves & pine straw in this week. Anyone else make leaf mold?

What is it besides the obvious and how do you use it? Never heard of it but that doesn't mean anything.

Mary

Are you asking about the leaf mold Mary? If so, its just composted leaves. You don't use any manure with it. Just a big pile of leaves, wet them down and let them sit for a year or so. I have bunches of leaves, so I thought why not try making leaf mold for next years garden. I do plan on layering the leaves with blood meal and wetting down with each layer. The blood meal will help them compost faster.

Leaf mold is a soil amendment. It increases water retention in soil. You will still have to add compost to your soil.

henless said:

Anyone else make leaf mold?

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Yes! I had a huge pile built that had been cooking down for 4 or 5 years. I added to the top from leaves I gathered every year.
I also had a big manure pile composting alongside it. One of my neighbors was making a pasture and trying to get as much manure as possible to spread so I volunteered my manure pile to her.
Another neighbor volunteered himself and his tractor and dump trailer to haul it for her. Unfortunately I wasn't there when the collecting took place and they accidentally
took both piles. That was the darkest, prettiest soil left in the vacant spot.

Worked on compost. Almost done dumping soiled stall bedding around my fruit trees, 2 wheelbarrows worth left to go. Picked up 6 more hens and 7 young roosters (to be butchered soon) and they reside in the 12 x 12 quarentine pen ( soon to be fixed up for 2018 baby chicks.) They soil on top of straw, so I am dumping it all in a pile to be tilled under next Spring and used next year for gardening.

henless said:

Anyone else make leaf mold?

Click to expand...

yes, i just dig down a ways and bury leaves and then a few years later dig it up and use it. it helps give the worms a place to hide from the drought/heat/cold and gives some extra drainage/air spaces in the clay.

some years i have friends bring me their leaves from the city and so i can have 30-50 bags to use up. can often fit 3-6 bags in a hole. gravity then takes over when i pile the dirt back over them and does the compacting. i give them the bags back to reuse. any that are torn will get buried and the worms eventually break them down too.

when done it looks enough like peat moss that i use it much the same. almost all of it breaks down within a few years once it gets mixed with the garden soil, but over the longer term it should add humic acids (large complex molecules which persist).

I've been busy taking care of my flock and herd. I bought 6 (~1yo) mutt hens earlier this month and I am glad that I did bc they are keeping the other 6 older hens warm. Weather was supposed to be -2 Wednesday morning. Instead it was -10, and tonight is Supposed to be -9, but I'm betting it goes down to -15.
I took some scrap wood and made a 3 sided shelter underneath the chicken coop, open to the east. I wisely put away bricks and cinder blocks so that they wouldn't freeze and I used those to support the wooden pieces.
Our winter winds are always from the W or NW. Bird's feed bowl is under the next box on the SE corner. Now my birds can get their drink from the heated dog water bowl (exposed) and then go under the coop to eat while standing on the dirt.
I only spot cleaned the coop before the new birds were introduced about 2 weeks ago. At that time they segregated, new birds and old birds. Now they have figured out the pecking order and mix on the roosts. Yesterday morning I stripped the bedding and added new to help keep the coop dry. I put down a 40 pound bag of Equine Fresh, then 1/2 a bad of medium pine shavings and put straw under the roosts. Their poo sticks to the straw and makes it easy to clean. Believe it or not, the new birds have been laying in the next boxes for several weeks now, EVEN IN this weather! I got 3 eggs yesterday, and one hen has enough EE in her to lay blue. I will try to get some pictures.
Yesterday, high was 8 above when I did the morning horse feeding and in the stall on the east side there was still water. THAT is what makes my wooden barn so valuable. The horses kick out heat, the hay/straw in the loft doesn't let it escape and they stay warm and dry.
I have been collecting cardboard from anybody who will give it to me and I am laying it down everywhere I clean up burdock, and then I dump stall waste on top to kill whatever burdock wants to grow there next year. I also have a pile in the "inner sanctum" (fenced in area in front of the barn) where I dump horse poo stuck to straw. I will till it up and use it next Spring like I did this year.
Tomorrow's high is 3 above. We don't get out of the icebox until next Saturday. brrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!

ducks4you said:

...Believe it or not, the new birds have been laying in the next boxes for several weeks now, EVEN IN this weather! I got 3 eggs yesterday, and one hen has enough EE in her to lay blue. I will try to get some pictures.
...
Tomorrow's high is 3 above. We don't get out of the icebox until next Saturday. brrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!

Click to expand...

other than i don't know what "EE" means in this context... you sound plenty busy but that is also a good way to keep warm!

cardboard is a very useful material and many places give it away for free. if you want larger pieces and have a truck ask around at the car/auto/body repair places because it will save them having to break it down or cut it up if you take it.

will be cold cold here too for a while.

Good to know about body repair places. Thanks!
EE are "Easter Eggers". They are a cross with a South American chicken breed called Auracaunas, which have no tail feathers, and something else?!? Don't really know. But I DO know that they lay blue/blue-green eggs and the roosters are not aggressive. Very popular breed. But my favorites are my Silver Laced Wyondottes. They are good layers (brown eggs) and not bothered by extreme heat OR extreme cold.
SOOOOO glad that my coop is clean and dry and that my birds are all set for what will be the coldest night yet this year.

Dumped half bucket of urine in the raised bed this morning...well..yesterday morning. Will keep adding it there to help break down the compostibles to be found in there. Unfortunately, the urine was frozen, so for now it's a block of yellow ice in the raised bed. Eventually it will warm up here and melt the block, I'm sure.

Ducks, I've got older hens laying in this cold, been getting 4-5 per day...the young POL hens aren't adding much to the nests, though, particularly those WR/EE mix youngin's nor the pure EE pullet. My good layers are the WRs, BAs and WR/BA mix birds, so always a few putting out eggs even in the coldest of winter.