Port Potager

If you're not interested in dirt, this might not be the blog post for you. But if you are, you might be interested in our fine-tuned chicken tractoring process. First, our fall-planted cover crop is winter rye: This is probably a much tougher cover crop than we needed in our raised beds, which don't face much of an erosion threat. I chose it mainly because we planted it pretty late and it was sure to germinate even in colder temperatures. Next year we will probably choose something with a much lighter root system so it will be easier to turn.  With the snow we've had, there are some intermediate steps about shoveling off beds to let the sun melt the rest of the snow and dry out the soil so the chickens aren't mired in mud, but in general the next step is to get the chickens on the rye grass in their portable run : Our chicken tractor is about four feet wide by eight feet long, and with four chickens in it for the day, we've discovered it take...

Back in the fall we sowed some winter rye  as a cover crop in many of our raised beds. When we finally got around to making our planting plans for 2013 , we realized that we had some winter rye in a bed that we were hoping to get a very early start on — sowing salad greens the weekend of March 2. That's next weekend! It all seemed very doable back in January when it was kind of warm, and when our memories of winter were informed by days like this  from the warmest winter on record. But then it got really, really cold, and the ground froze solid.  That was a problem, because part of dealing with a cover crop is turning it back into the soil, preferably 3-4 weeks before you plan to plant anything in that soil. That leaves time for the cover crop to decompose and for the roots to dry out, as they are exposed to the air when you turn the soil. We had already gotten a jump on killing the green part of the rye grass by letting the chickens eat it all , but there was...

This weekend was a classic January Thaw, and that gave us an opportunity to build a portable run for the chickens. Lots of people build all kinds of fancy-schmancy ones  like chicken tractors with wheels and nice paint jobs and stuff, but we already have a pretty chic (and ridiculously well-built) primary residence for our birds, so all we needed was a summer camp. So Kirk took a Christmas gift card to the hardware store and got us some Christmas 2x4s that he ripped in half and used to knock together this frame: As you can see, it is designed to fit right inside our raised beds (that is, just shy of four feet wide). It's two feet high, which is tall enough for chickens, but short enough to use two-foot wide chicken wire around the sides. It's eight feet long, which is the length of lumber that fits inside a Ford Focus.  After building the frame yesterday, we realized we needed a door to get the chickens in and out, so Kirk added a little bit of framing f...

Now that fall is here, we are slowly clearing our garden beds of plants that have died back. Gone now are the potatoes, corn, onions, pole beans, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and all but one pumpkin vine. That opens up quite a bit of bare soil, and this year we decided to experiment with a cover crop. I chose to use winter rye because it is supposed to be able to sprout and get established even through the end of October, and that seemed a wise choice for our New England garden. From what I have read, the trickier part will be making sure that we get outside to turn it back into the soil a month before we want to plant in those spots. Still, we are hoping that the winter rye can protect our soil during the winter and add some nitrogen while we sit inside our cozy house.    I sowed some spots last week, just before the rain. In just a few days, the seeds (which are quite big, and also tempting to the chickens) were already sprouting: By the end of our rainy ...

Our potato plants have finally all died back, and we dug the rest of them up: All of these were our red potatoes. Earlier in the summer we harvested the white ones, because those plants died back more quickly. Some of them are double potatoes, with an older one that has sprouted a newer potato on top, connected like siamese twins. We brushed off the dirt and let them dry in the sun before packing them into paper bags and storing them in the basement. That should be just the right spot for them: cool, dark, and fairly humid. We're hoping they keep through the winter so we have veggies in the cold months. Usually we eat a bunch of a harvest fresh right away, but most of these have gone into storage precisely because they should keep well. I'm not sure how far 10 to 15 pounds of potatoes is going to get us, and I suspect that we'll be planting a lot more next year. We'll also try to get them in a sunnier spot and monitor our hilling up system more closely — ...