Morning garden update July 20
I think I'm gonna start posting in the mornings now after watering. Just a journal of the garden and what we see.
Big sunflower blooming! Can you see the little bug on top? He's been there for a few days.
Today we saw another velvet ant. Didn't get a picture. The Hawks and turtles were a no show today.
The South bed is doing marvelous. The needles and leaves from the carport a few weeks ago are holding moisture supremely well! It gets watered daily, so I'm gonna stop watering a few days to see how it does.
Here it is on top. Looks like a pile of pine needles, acorns, and leaves. Fancy that. Remember, underneath it is a layer of cardboard on top of a layer of compost. There's a lot of bug life in and around this bed. Beetles, ants, rollie polies, and the occasional roach. Don't tell Melissa about the roaches.
Down inside is super moist. There's almost mud on the cardboard. The mix is about four inches deep in most places. Around the edges maybe less, and at the deepest maybe six inches. I didn't spread it super evenly.
I call this one the hay bed. It's the one from last week after I mowed. I raked the area I mowed into this row for this purpose. Later I came back and added leaves and another thin layer of grass clippings. I dare say it is doing better than the South bed. The material is super damp, warm, and smells absolutely great.
My only apprehension with it is that I placed it perpendicular to the slope of the yard. I think it would be best if it were parallel to the slope, but maybe I'm wrong. I was hot and tired and didn't know I had pneumonia lol not to mention the fact that I'm super new to all this.
There's some small okra coming up! That's exciting. See the tiny spider? Seeing that if comes up where the flowers were, we may have squash soon as well. They're putting off some big beautiful yellow blooms.
Sam and I have been flooding and digging mole holes this week. This one is in the south side by the new beds, well house, and tree nursery. He likes that he gets to dig, I like that the water gets deep down in the ground, and we like talking and playing together in the mornings.
The pecan trees are doing great! At the first post there were ten, I now count fifteen. A couple friends at work already say they may want one or two, so I bet we'll be digging some up eventually. I want em a couple feet tall first though, so probably next year. They're doing pretty well with the pine needle mulching.
This was a fun post. I think I'm gonna do this more. That way I'll have a consistent topic to post about. I'm going to shower and bed now. Picking up chickens and a coop later on today!
Stay cool and stay relevant
Nate
Never saw a sunflower like this one. Interesting colors.
Yeah, it was a surprise for us too. We were expecting yellow. This was it's first day to bloom :) a nice bright surprise!
Are you familiar with which kind it is - more specifically if the seeds will be good for food? I've always had ones that aren't good for food, and so they've only ever caused me unnecessary trouble! haha, but @acesontop is right, interesting colours. Nice.
I'm not sure. Guess I can eat it and see! I want a good patch of edible sunflowers. I understand the chickens love em, so that would be a neat little system for them.
Stay cool 😂
It's hot ousside fam.
I know it is. FYI to non-Texans: it's only supposed to hit a measly 110°F this week or something. It was 101 on my way to work... 3 hours after the sun had gone down
Oh wow, that's crazy hot. According to the goog the hottest temp we've had recorder here is 93⁰F
Warmest I have felt was 106 while visiting san antonio something like 20ish years ago. I'm not bread for that type of heat.
For sure. I think I may have been bred for it.. doesn't mean I have to like it lol. It's near unbearable sometimes. It's like the cold of winter in other areas: you just do what you can until the next season comes along and pray that the worse season doesn't eat up too much of your year
93 would be heaven right now. Like literally heaven
Waiting to hear more about the chickens...
We got a lot done today! The coop itself is still up, but the pallet-wall run is disassembled. A good bit of it is at the house now. We worked from about 7 to 10 on taking it all down. Very well made.
Looks like Sunday will be the day we get it all back over here because it's gonna take a box truck to get the coop. It's up about 5 feet off the ground and measures about 4x8x4 feet high.
The chickens are cute black bantams with feathery feet and red faces. Three hens and a rooster :)
So that will give you 172 sq. ft. Bantams need a bit less room than standard size birds. I grew up having bantams. So that's just over 40 sq. ft per bird. They should be in heaven...
I'm hoping so :) eventually we'll work up to a few more, but I hope to keep them at a very comfortable level. No less than 10sf per bird.
I don't know yet if we'll free range em. I'm leaning more towards what I've heard described as a"bug moat" where there's chicken wire tunnels through the garden so they can access bugs and still enjoy some safety from predators. Best of both worlds I suppose.
I liked the idea of the tunnels, but it just isn't practical here. This is what we do instead:
They get a new area each week and they are protected from land and aerial predators. We call it the snake fence because it's long and skinny and has lots of twists and turns.
If you decide to NOT let them roam, check out my post on chicken entertainment. It will go a long ways towards preventing bad behaviors.
Oh yeah, that's an even better idea! That way you can change the direction every week. That's a great idea.