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Category Archives: compost

WaterSmart Landscape Makeover Class

03 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by ninagarden in compost, drought-tolerant, planning, Southern California Rain, Uncategorized, water-wise garden

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drought tolerant gardening, Water-wise

It took about six hours to dig up the turf.

Bye, bye lawn. It took two guys about six hours to dig up the turf.

I attended my first WaterSmart Makeover Class a few weeks ago. It was really inspiring, so inspiring that I went home and ripped out the grass in the front yard! Actually, I learned that you don’t have to do that. There is a way to eliminate your turf without the expense and hard labor of digging it out, but that is for the next class.

Workbook for WaterSmart Landscape Makeover Series

Workbook for WaterSmart Landscape Makeover Series

The class is put on by the San Diego Water Authority and started with an overview by the Assistant Water Resource Specialist Joni German. I won’t get into all the details of the drought in the state of California but for San Diego, I learned some interesting facts that explain why my Hydrangeas look dead and my vegetable garden won’t grow the same way it did.

First of all she explained that the rainfall in San Diego this year is actually above average! We usually get 10 inches a year and this year we have had 11 inches already. Then why do my plants look so crappy? It is because our temperatures have been hotter than normal for the last fifteen months. 2014 was the hottest year on record for San Diego. This heatwave, combined with our water conservation efforts, have left my garden looking horrible. It’s definitely time for a change.

Change requires work–and homework. I had to do some drainage testing, soil testing, and draw up a basic sketch of the existing landscape and irrigation features. It was stuff I like to do…

Dig a 12 X 12 foot hole fill with water. Let sit 8 hours. Then fill with water. Let sit one hour. Measure how far water has gone down. Look up your results on drainage scale.

Drainage test. Dig a 12 X 12 foot hole and fill with water. Let sit 8 hours. Then fill with water. Let sit one hour. Measure how far water has gone down. Look up your results on drainage scale.

Next class is on landscape design–I’m so excited. The third class is where we put our skills to work and show our design plans to an actual designer. We each get thirty minutes of consultation.  The final class is on irrigation. If you are considering replacing your lawn with water-wise plants, I highly suggest you sign up for this free WaterSmart Makeover Class. It is a very useful and interesting class and it’s FREE. You can’t beat that. You get dinner too.

The next class is on my 15th anniversary. Your spouse can go with you. I’m sure it will be a very educational anniversary. Maybe I can bring some champagne!

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February Planting with No Coffee

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by ninagarden in chickens, compost, dog, garden, rats, Uncategorized, vegetables

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

chickens, garden, gardening, roses, vegetables

Other than the travesty of our coffee maker breaking, the week has been off to a pretty good start.

Warning—this blog was written entirely without coffee.

Even though it was not a perfectly sunny weekend, it was warm enough to garden, and I got a lot done. I planted almost all the plants I bought last fall and I only have one rose left from last spring’s order that I still need to plant. I’m scoping out a new spot–that means I’ll have to get another rose to plant where I thought I would plant this one.  You can never enough roses!

It’s good not to have planting last spring’s plant purchases hanging over my head.

For some reason, I finally worked up the nerve to start using the Rose Pro method of fertilizing, what appears to be a complicated series of odd things you have to hunt down at nurseries and drug stores to pour on your roses each month—urea, potash and Milogranite—just a few of the things in my future.  This week, I put Epson Salts and Super Phosphate on half of them today (the half that didn’t get the Ada Perry’s Magic Formula—I just love that name and won’t stop using it!).

Now I have an experiment going. We will see what works better. I can’t put the Ada Perry’s with Bone Meal on my roses where the dogs will eat it so it goes on the plants outside the wall. The puppy took a lick of the Epson Salts but I stopped her right away and most of my roses are fenced off (for this reason and the because of the chickens) with that low green wire fence.

I put my first chicken poop compost on a few of my plants too. Hoping that doesn’t burn, but it sat for six months and looked like real compost you’d buy in a store (Ha ha) and the dogs don’t want to eat it because it doesn’t smell like chicken poop anymore—just a guess…

I planted rosemary and horsetail reeds in my chicken garden. I need to buy more to fill out the space because they look nice and the chickens aren’t eating them. Rosemary chicken is a new joke around here.

I planted two azaleas because I have acid soil and they are supposed to like that. We planted artichokes, tomatoes, delphiniums, blue berries, onions and Iceland poppies, which I had to fight over with little sister who wanted them all for her fairy garden. She is envious of big sister’s fabulous fairy garden but hers is just as good…

Boy, I’m so random. That’s a problem with liking plants and not having enough coffee.

My husband bought a Raticator. You should hear Henrietta squawk when she sees a rat. It sounds she is being strangled. I heard chickens can stop laying eggs when the rats come so it should make Henrietta happy to have a new rat trap to save her.raticator

Anyway, here’s stuff I don’t want to forget to buy:

More Bill Wallis geraniums—they are looking great.

More Peruvian lily

Rosa Rugosa alba

Ferns for fern grotto—new idea for under elm tree

Coral bells

Remember to consider weeping willows because Tacoma Stands look terrible and may need replacing

One new Zuni Crape Myrtle tree

Cat mint to plant under roses

New lemon (dwarf)

Plant eggplant this year

Okay that’s enough! It will probably take me a year to plant all that.

If I had a decent cup of coffee, I would probably make more sense. The French press is our salvation and our curse–it’s a slow process for a small cup of coffee. Today I heard my husband talking to my father about how to make cowboy coffee or boiled coffee, his lifetime specialty.  We have to do something while we wait for our new coffee maker to come in the mail. Here is his try at cowboy coffee.

coffee

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Cute Coop

25 Friday May 2012

Posted by ninagarden in chickens, compost, garden, gardening, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Two months and two weeks after our chicks arrived, they spent the their first night in their deluxe new purple chicken coop.  It also happened to be the night of my birthday, and there is no birthday present like getting chickens out of your house! Thank you to my hunky husband for building me a beautifully constructed, painstakingly perfect chicken coop. I love it!

Now here’s the construction dude. He looks happy because he is almost done building this. He spent a lot of late nights in the garage working on it. Really, he wasn’t that happy about it, but he looks happy in this picture.

 

Now the dog is a different story. He doesn’t like the chickens in a coop. He thinks they should be free-range. Look at him here staring them down as only a herding breed can do. Is he going to eat them or is he trying to protect them?

He may be in a down position because of his arthritis, or he may really be wanting to be near them. He loves them in his own special, bossy, I’m the king-of-you kind of way.

Actually, the chickens have given him a new lease on life. He’s almost died in January, and I think they are giving him a reason to get up in the morning. He wants to be right in the middle of everything we do with them, which is typical Aussie behavior. But if he thinks the chickens are mis-behaving, he tries to heel them by biting their tail feathers, and my vet told me that could be potentially life-threatening for a chicken so I always have to be careful.

It’s always exciting around here on our little Point Loma farm!  Happy Memorial Day!

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Yeah, We Got Chickens—The Trendy Chicken

27 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by ninagarden in chickens, compost

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

chickens, ranch

Does it seem like everyone you know has chickens these days? At least here in our community, which is very urban, very beachy, very chicken-y—the answer is –you guessed it, Yes. Chickens are trendy right now. Very trendy.  Not one to miss out, I have three little chicks too.

When I told my father, who grew up on a ranch, he said “*$!!$#, why did you do that?” He ranted for a long time something like ….

“I cleaned chicken poop from chicken coops from the time I was three until I was 16. They are the dirtiest, dumbest animals ever.”

Really, Dad, you cleaned coops at the age of three?

Did I mention he was a rancher?

Growing up, I never remember having chickens on our ranch or our farm. Okay, maybe one time, one cowboy had some, but they didn’t last long. I remember a pig. A giant, muddy pig that I was scared of.  I remember a Texas longhorn cow with brass doorknobs on the tips of her six-foot long horns. I remember lots of big red quarter horses.

I remember kittens.

Calves.

Cattle dogs.

A donkey.

Never chickens.

Or sheep (which is like a swear word to most ranchers) Or goats (Boy, did I want a goat. I still do.)

Did I mention that my chicks are the cutest, sweetest things? I don’t care if they are dumb. I think they like me. They look at me when I talk to them; they know my voice and start peeping. They are cute even if they are losing all their down and look like little teenage messes, little punk-rock chickens, chickens that went through a dryer.

Every morning, I try to spy on them. I creep over to the door in the room where they are living in a giant plastic bin with chicken wire on the top, and I try to catch them off guard. At first as I watch, they chase each other around, they stretch their nascent wings, they stand on the water dish.  Then they spy me, freeze, and start peeping.

“Hello! Hello! Hello!” I imagine them saying. “Let us out of here, we want to stretch. We want to dig up your garden. We want to parade around the yard.”

Hmm. Wonder what my Australian Shepherd will think of that? He already tried to eat one — even in his feeble, arthritic state. He watched innocently as my daughters held the chicks, and Whomp! Chomp! He tried to grab one. A lot of women started screaming. I had two grandmas here. Two little girls. Everyone started hollering at my dog, and they kicked him out of the house.  Hopefully, he learned his lesson. He is very sensitive. Diego, the sweet boy

My mother who is from a large farming family in Ohio, said her grandmother loved her chickens. She sent her daughter to college on chicken egg money. (Don’t think my chicken eggs will pay for college these days.)

Her “little grandma” she called her as if being short had something to do with caring for chickens.

Mother seems excited for chickens, but worried too. She worries about almost everything. Now she is worried that I will kill the chickens.

Hey, mom, they lived in my office for the first week. I had conference calls with peeping chicks.

“I can hear them,” my employee said when we spoke on the phone. “Clients will think you are peeping.”

Gee. I moved them, okay? Now I can walk up and spy.

“Honey, hurry up and build the chicken coop,” I say to my husband each morning when I see how much they’ve grown overnight. Just like a baby, they grow while sleeping.  (I really want a chicken coop that looks like a gypsy wagon, but I don’t think he’s willing to have that in our yard.)

Anyway, I wonder what sociologists will say years from now when they study urban farming trends in 2012. Will they say we were misguided?  A chicken only lays eggs for two or three years, the book says. What will happen to all the old chickens of Point Loma? We can’t set them free by the sea shore.  I certainly don’t want to eat mine when they are old. Will people relinquish them to the dog pound?

Will social scientists say this urban chicken farming trend was a yearning for a simpler life? A reaction to these tough recessionary years?  Nostalgia?  Most people I know get chickens once their kids reach a more independent age. That’s a weird one to think about!

It definitely seems to be  fulfilling a need —  the way growing  flowers or vegetables meets a need to actually produce something tangible, to make something real—not a spreadsheet or a blog, but something you can touch and hold—or eat.

I think it’s fascinating how many people are getting chickens—me included.

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Compost Thrills

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by ninagarden in compost, garden, gardening, Uncategorized

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compost

All the talk of composting made me want to try, too. I didn’t want to buy one of those $100 composting bins and growing worms isn’t for me. I came just imagine my eight year old walking in the house holding a hundred worms in her bare hands. (She loves any creepy crawly thing.) No, I can’t grow my own worm castings. I prefer to buy a bag of them when I can afford it.

So back to composting — I found this video on Sunset Magazine’s web site:http://www.sunset.com/garden/backyard-projects/chicken-wire-compost-bin-video-00400000037005/

This was cheap, fast and easy to make. The problem was that this method took me a year to make compost!

Also, if you do this method, you had better have a lot of space because you should start several of these bins at once or over a series of months. That way you would have continuous compost and when one bin filled up, you could start another. Also, it was very hard to stir and turn the compost the way you were supposed to because the sides were too high. Maybe my husband and I made it too high to begin with, but you might want to consider how tall you are (and how strong you are too.)

Now in the Vegetable Gardner’s Bible by Edward C. Smith, it shows this type of chicken wire hoop as the perfect tool for making “leaf mold” compost, which is supposed to be one of the best composts. But he tells you it takes a year. So start now!

The compost I eventually made ended up enriching my vegetable garden but was nowhere near what I need for my whole yard. I am still trying to figure it out. Send me your ideas!

Now if you have a very short attention span, need instant gratification and cheap thrills (and can’t wait for compost to decompose), try this soil amendment recipe from my favorite San Diego gardening author Pat Welsh.  In her Southern California Gardening book, she writes about harvesting seaweed from the beach. Stuff it in a black plastic bag, take it home and chop it up with a machete and mix it in the soil. All this sounds really funny to me. I don’t think I have a machete. I guess I could use a meat cleaver. I am not sure that would be safe for anyone.  But if you really want to try that go for it. I may do it one day just to amuse my husband or my niece –she says all I blog about is fertilizer, anyway.

Please send me your composting tips. I need help!

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