(sub)Urban Farming

This is a reprint of my very first published article in the 2012 Spring Region 12 Newsletter for the American Hemerocallis Society.  I had never really thought I wanted to write for publication before, but I actually had a good time with it, and with writing the local club news article at the back of the issue. My apologies for the redundancy to those of you who have followed the blog.  If you know me, you already know all of this. But I hope you enjoy the recap!

When Greg Crane asked me to write a piece for the newsletter about “Chickens and Daylilies” I was, frankly, stumped. I’m a part-time blogger, and I’ve written about our chickens, and I’ve written about our daylilies on www.cari-daway.blogspot.com. But I 

never really thought about “Chickens AND Daylilies.”  A few weeks were spent with this 

concept rolling around in my mind, and more than a few attempts at writing that were actually spent looking at a blank screen and a blinking cursor. I asked the Facebook universe for ideas. My friend Timi said she understood my block by equating her being asked to write about her jeep and her dogs: two things she loves but don’t really intersect. 

One of our daylily club friends, Kyle Pierson, said that the feathers of the chickens could be like the colors in daylilies, or that going out to see the flowers in the morning is like looking for eggs. All are valid points. But nothing really lit my literary pilot light. I 

flirted briefly with the comparison of my hobby of collecting lists of potential chicken names (such as Magdalena Van der Flocken) with some daylily enthusiasts’ hobby of collecting lists of potential daylily names (I know you’re out there. Terri Jones can’t be the only one who does this!) Then it hit me: Poop! Yes, poop. Not literally, thank goodness. Put a pin in that thought, we’ll return to it in a few minutes.

I realized that the chickens were an integral part of the mini eco-system we’ve created in
our little neighborhood city lot. My husband and I both have green thumbs. I also have a
passion for healthy organic food and a clean environment that borders on the obsessive
(and occasionally annoying.) These qualities combined a few years ago into a 10-tower
hydroponic garden, a square-foot garden for my kitchen herbs and natural pest control
aphid-trapping bed, a worm composter and traditional compost bin, and our chickens:
Phyllis, Pearl and Francine. We also grow about 150 daylily cultivars. Small potatoes in
the daylily world, but when you consider how tiny our house and lot is, that’s about all
we have room for. I believe that in the chemical sense, one should impact the earth as
little as possible, but while doing that impacting, one should get as much out of it as one
can in the space allotted.

In the hydroponic garden, we grow enough produce to feed ourselves, the chickens, the
neighbors, my Pilates instructor, the girls at the local tea shop and sometimes our friends,
family and co-workers. The catnip grows especially well, as do tomatoes, Swiss chard,
onions, carrots, basil, snow peas, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, beans and many other
things. The ability to grow 6 times the produce in the same space as conventional
gardening appeals to me, as does the ability to do it without chemical pesticides,
fertilizers or fungicides that leach into the water table or harm wildlife. The only real
challenge we had was squirrels. Eventually Jay caged in the entire structure with chicken
wire, and that has kept out the squirrels, but continues to let in a tiny field mouse with
whom we’ve agreed to share. He doesn’t eat as much as a dozen squirrels do, so it seems
like a good balance. And the structure only looks a little bit like a prison camp….. but I
digress.

  Two years ago, Jay and I decided to get chickens. He spent about two months of
weekends and a spring break building a really nice coop. He is especially proud of its
door. In April of 2010 we brought home Babette, (who later grew into Bobette and had to go back to the farm) Sylvia, Pearl and Phyllis. Sylvia has since passed away, but Francine recently joined our flock. During the construction of the coop, Jay had dug up and potted all the daylilies so he’d have room to work without having to worry about tromping all over them in his many trips back and forth across the yard. When the coop was finished, he built two big (for our yard, about 8’ x 8’) raised beds about 18” high, to put all the daylilies back into. Here’s where the poop comes in. I told you we’d get back to that.

We – and let there be no doubt that when I say “we” it is all “Jay” - filled the beds with 

compost and bagged oak leaves we liberated from lawns and curb sides all over South
Tampa. But what really got the beds ready for replanting for the daylilies were the 

chickens. We finally got brave enough to let our very spoiled, indulged, coddled and
generally over-protected city chickens out of the coop to free-range every afternoon
(supervised closely, of course.) Jay tossed sunflower seeds up into the empty beds and the girls hopped in and started turning over the soil and, well, pooping. Poop = fertilizer = daylilies. Happy daylilies. 2011 was our best daylily season ever. The sunflower seeds in one of the beds did not get eaten as much as the other, so at one point we had a bed full of giant sunflowers with happy daylilies growing in their shade. When it became time to cut down all the sunflowers to give the daylilies room to grow, I dried the heads and gave them to the chickens. Poop = fertilizer = sunflowers = chicken treats = eggs + poop.

Every morning, Jay takes organic brown rice mixed with organic yogurt out to “the
girls,” and in bloom season he deadheads the daylilies and chucks them into the chicken
coop along with some Swiss chard, field-mouse-chewed tomatoes, or carrot tops from the
hydroponic garden. Since we don’t ever spray any dangerous chemicals in our daylilies
or in our hydroponic garden plants, we can safely feed them to the chickens. Poop =
fertilizer = daylilies + hydroponic vegetables = chicken treats = eggs + poop.

Since we have the chickens, and because I’m pretty militant about not spraying chemicals all over the yard that my chickens and invited wildlife and beneficial insects frequent, we do occasionally have to deal with uninvited guests such as aphids or sooty mold in the veggies that are in the squash family. This is where the worm composting and square foot garden comes in. Worm tea is a great anti-bacterial and insecticide that is safe to use in the garden. Gaura lindheimeri 'Whirling Butterflies’ is an aphid magnet. We plant it in a small square foot bed in relative close proximity to other plants that are aphid candy like daylilies or hibiscus, and the aphids glom onto the stems of the Guara and tend to stay off the plant we actually care about. Jay calls the stems “Aphid Popcicles” because I cut them off when they’re loaded up with aphids and feed them to the chickens. In the past, I’ve brought in ladybugs to then eat the aphids, but for the last couple of years, I just let the chickens eat them. If the aphids wipe out the Guara it’s not a big loss since they reseed like crazy, and are only $3 at the garden center. They’re cute, too. Worm tea + castings = Guara = aphid magnet = chicken treats = eggs + poop.

I bet you’re wondering now “What does she do with all that poop?” We make compost,
of course. And the cycle continues. We can use the compost to top dress the daylily
beds, and the butterfly garden, as well as supplement the Guara and my kitchen herb
garden. The compost bin is located next to the door that opens to clean out the hen house,
so I just have to scoop, turn and dump. Of course the garden and kitchen produce waste
that doesn’t get fed to the worms or the chickens goes into the pile, as well as eggshells
and tea leaves we pick up from a local tea shop and coffee grounds we get from Whole
Foods. It’s also located next to the fence by the neighbor’s yard, so they toss their kitchen waste into it as well.

Our chickens give us enjoyment every day, along with the eggs and poop we use to keep
our daylilies growing. Our daylilies give us enjoyment every day during bloom season,
and are good treats for the chickens. They do look a little like bloody dinosaurs when
they dig into a deadheaded blossom from a red cultivar, though. That can be a little
disconcerting. They love to take dust baths underneath my kitchen herb garden, and also
work diligently to keep down the unwelcome insect population in the yard. We rely on
our hydroponic farm to feed the chickens, and ourselves and compost whatever we can in
order to keep the cycle going. So there you have it. Chicken poop is the substance which
binds our (sub)Urban eco-system together.




.

Achieving Chicken Integration

Jay and Sylvia

In November, we had our first chicken funeral.  Jay's favorite, our most docile and sweet girl, Sylvia, passed away somewhat unexpectedly. She had had a whistling sort of breathing sound for months, and several of the resources we consulted indicated that if she was still eating (check), not losing weight (check), still laying (check) and still acting normal (check) that she was probably fine and just had a scarred airway.  Sadly, they were wrong, and I went out to let the girls have some free-range time one afternoon and she was laying on the floor of the coop.  We had a funeral for her when Jay came home from work.  It was a hard thing.  I felt terribly guilty for her passing because I kept thinking we needed to do more for her, but hadn't acted on my instinct.  Lesson Learned: Find a good old-fashioned country veterinarian who would see poultry as part of the normal practice, so next time one of the girls seems out of sorts we have a place to take her. (check)

Francine

That same week, our friend called to tell us that he had a hen for us.  Months earlier, he had hatched a mixed nest of Cochin and Marans eggs.  Cochins are large and somewhat docile and have feathery feet.  Marans are a breed that lay extremely dark colored eggs and also have feathery feet.  The babies grew up, and our friend had an 'extra' Marans pullet (teenage girl chicken) that he wanted to share with us.  We were really excited about having a Marans, because of the unique color of their eggs, and because they are also very pretty chickens.

We were a bit concerned that we didn't know how to introduce new chickens to our small group (made smaller by Sylvia's passing) in a way that would keep all the girls safe both from one another as well as any germs, bacteria or diseases that might be transmitted between the birds.  To compound the concern, the new girlie was totally flea-infested. I thought she had brown feathers around her eyes.... but it was just a dense mat of fleas that were incredibly 'sticky' and stubborn.  She was crawling with them.  I felt so horrible for her.  It became even more important to isolate her, until we could get the flea situation under control.

Chicken Tractor

We went to a local farm supply and bought a portable chicken tractor to keep our Newbie in.  It's about 4' x 8', with a little sleeping loft. At this point we were still deciding on a name.  I wanted to have something French, since Marans are a French breed. She was called "Newbette" until we settled on a name (Francine). She was used to living with a large flock of birds, and now she was alone in a strange place, with airplane noises and traffic sounds.  Jay and I dusted the yard, the chicken, her new coop with Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth.  It's fossilized algae, that cuts and slices up the insides of the fleas and causes them to dehydrate and die.  It's safe to use on your yard and around your plants. You do need to wear a mask so you don't breathe in the dust because it can damage our lungs if inhaled in large quantities.

During this time, we let Phyllis and Pearl out of their coop and they made a bee-line over to the new tractor to check out their guest.  Everyone seemed to be adjusting well, and when we let Francine out, she went straight to the big coop and the ladies clucked and talked through the fencing.  After a few days, we decided to let everyone out together.  We had sat with her wrapped in a towel, pulling fleas off her with a tweezer a few times, and felt that we had enough of them under control to let them out together.

At first, it went well.  Phyllis and Pearl were nice enough, but they were occasionally bossy and a bit mean to her.  She would fly away a bit, and then come back towards them.  When evening came, we'd put her back in her tractor, and she became used to putting herself back at nightfall.  Finally we decided that it was time to try to let her integrate into the big coop.  That led to one of the most heartbreaking sights we'd ever witnessed in Chicken Land.  Apparently Phyllis and Pearl were okay with playing with Francine's toys, but did not want her to share their bedroom with them.  She would follow them gamely up the ladder to their henhouse, only to have them flip out on her and scare her away.  It was getting dark, and she got a bit panicked. So we had to rescue her and put her back into her tractor.

Francine's Egg

We decided to build a second henhouse (Francine's Apartment) in the big coop. In the meantime, we would take her out of her tractor at night, and put her in the henhouse after everyone was asleep. The idea was that waking up together would make Phyllis and Pearl think that Francine belonged with them at bedtime. No dice.  So Jay built her a little room like theirs, complete with her own ladder. The next sad night Phyllis and Pearl again objected loudly to her following them to bed... and she trudged up and down the ladder a few times, trying over and over to gain access to their roost until it got too dark for her to see.  We had to place her in her own coop, so she could settle down.

Then we had a cold snap, and all of a sudden there was an attitude shift. Pearl and Phyllis decided that three chickens were warmer than two, and stopped chasing Francine off when she tried to go to bed with them.

Eggs

Everything has been fine ever since.  They all sleep together, dust bathe together and hang out together. They all take turns laying eggs in both hen house nest boxes.  Francine wasn't as used to being handled as Phyllis and Pearl and she is still really skittish, but we're working on it.  She will now eat sunflower seeds out of Jay's hand, and is getting more brave about coming out of the coop in the afternoon even if I'm standing in the doorway.  She and Pearl squawk incessantly when Phyllis is laying her egg, and right now they are all looking for cool stuff to eat in the garden area Jay just opened up for them.  If Phyllis and Pearl wander off and she doesn't notice at first, she will squawk and fuss until Phyllis comes and finds her and leads her over to wherever they had been. It's really nice to see them become a little family.

Cari-d Away to Callaway

 Every other year or so in December, we bundle ourselves up in multiple layers of our warmest woolies and drive up to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia for some winter wonderland fun at their Fantasy in Lights event.

 The resort starts putting up light displays throughout the park in September, and it takes until around Thanksgiving to install all 8 million lights.  After sundown, you pack up into open-air Jolly Trolleys and are driven through the park to  see all the displays.  I won't show you any of my pictures that I take at night because they never turn out, but you can see them on Callaway's website.  The two pictures above are ones I took of two of the displays the next morning on our drive.

our cottage

The resort has many options for lodging.  We usually get either a cottage or a villa lock-out (when someone rents a 3 bedroom villa but only needs two of the rooms, we rent the third at a significantly reduced rate).  This year our cottage overlooked part of the 10 mile bike trail.

Butterfly Conservatory

The morning following the light show, we have breakfast in either a country style restaurant or the new restaurant in their Lodge and Spa building, then we tour some of the garden sites.   There is the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower trail, the location of the Southern Victory Garden and our favorite, the Butterfly Conservatory.

Inside this glassed-in structure are literally thousands of butterflies - over 2700 the day we were there, according to the Butterfly Count board.  There are butterflies hatching in a display, and then once you walk into the humid tropical enclosure, you see them everywhere... flying, feeding, just hanging out.  It's a magical place.

ladybugs

We walk around in this lush indoor garden, looking all around at the butterflies that are on plants, feeding on fruit, walking around on benches and windows and even landing on people.  There are even hundreds of ladybugs, part of the garden's practice of using natural pest control methods instead of chemical pesticides.  Ladybugs LOVE aphids, so having them hatch out colonies of the little red and black buggies help to control the aphid population on the host and feed plants for the butterflies.  We do the same thing in our yard every year, too.

the hatching display

feeding tray

greens and cabbage

Next we moved on to the Victory Garden.  The resort employs 6 full time gardeners on the 7.5 acre plot. They grow veggies that are used in the in-park restaurants, and they also sell the excess to park guests.  Of course while we are there in the winter, all that's really growing are collards and cabbages, but my gardener's eye could fill in the blank spots that I'm sure come spring and summer are filled with all sorts of produce.  The park gardens also serves as a testing ground for new varieties, and also employs natural and 'green' growing practices to treat pests and diseases, should issues like that arise.

There is an herb garden as well as a sundial garden, and some really nice shady spots that I'm sure are welcome in the warmer weather.  They film some of the PBS Victory Garden tv show episodes from there.  We always say that 'next year, we should come back and see the park in the spring or fall when everything is blooming' but so far we haven't. I'm sure that when the azaleas and rhododendrons are in bloom the entire mountain is swathed in rosy pink and fuschia.

Jay on the victory garden porch

This is one of our favorite places to go, and I can heartily recommend it to anyone in need of something to get them in the Christmas spirit.  We've talked about spending Christmas there, treating ourselves to the spa and sipping cider by a roaring fire...Maybe next year will be the year we actually try out those bike trails and see actual wildflowers growing on the wildflower trail, and actual veggies in the veggie garden!

Sad Day in Squash Land......

I hate quitting.  Giving up.  Surrendering. But if gardening doesn't teach you anything else, it'll teach you that sometimes the little guy wins.  Little guys like Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers, Powdery Mildew and Sooty Mold.  And even some sort of unidentified angular trapezoidal squash bug thing. 

So it's with a heavy heart and a sad sigh that I say a fond farewell to my hydroponic squash plants.  Goodbye zucchini.  You gave me 4 really good squashes before you succumbed to powdery mildew.  Goodbye yellow and white patty pan.  You tried really hard to get going, but the fungus got to you before I could.  Goodbye yellow "One Ball" squash.  I was very excited about your first BIG squash, and sad to see the rest of them wither and die. 

You, "Tromboncino."  I will miss you most of all.  You promised three feet of bright green zucchini-like goodness.  You looked a bit like a marital aid.  You, of all the varieties, looked like you were fighting better than the rest.  I have 5 of your baby squash to try in a meal this weekend to remember you by.  I thought it best to harvest what I could before we took you out of the bin.

I'm sorry we didn't realize you all were fighting for your lives before it was too late.  I've learned that if we are going to plant you again, it'll be during a cooler time, and with more air flow around you.  And we'll start preventative spraying with worm tea from the start, because that's more effective than trying to halt fungus and mildew  once it's already in progress. 

On the bright side, your free-ranging volunteer patty-pan cousin is doing really well (so far).  He's HUGE, and while is has a few leaves showing powdery mildew, and we've lost a few baby squashes to sooty mold, he seems to be bravely and happily holding his own in the yard... never been watered, never been fertilized except for two applications of worm tea.  He's often covered in Lubbers and something has laid eggs on his huge leaves.  He might be dead by the time we get back from Arizona, but for now, he's a real trooper.

Onward.  Today, the squash plants will be replaced with yard-long Chinese Red Noodle Beans and Super Sugar Snap Peas.  We'll keep a close eye on the cucumbers that were in the bins next to the squash, because they can be susceptible to the same things that got the squash.  We managed to get a good number of cukes last year, so maybe our luck will continue this year.

Another day, another humbling garden lesson learned.

Vermi-WHAT?

A little over a year ago, we bought a Worm Composting Bin from Carl and Bernie Moro of  Our Vital Earth. Bernie and Carl were guest speakers at one of our Daylily Club meetings.  They brought their Can O' Worm systems, along with samples of their worm tea and worm castings.  We were very interested in reducing our kitchen waste, and composting more effectively than with the outside compost pile (which, in our yard,  really is just a salad bar for wayward possums.)  Bernie and Carl told us about how they went to Australia to learn more about Vermiculture (which is the growing of worms) and Vermicomposting.  The containers are made from recycled battery cases, and are ubiquitous in Australian households.

We brought our composter home and set it up.  It was really easy.  It came with worms and starter bedding and a DVD that I've since misplaced and had to order another one.  You start with just one tray, fill it with kitchen scraps, and watch them go to town.  As the months go on, you add a tray until you get all of them going.  The bottom of the composter is a water reservoir, with a spigot on it.  Once a week, I drain off the liquid before I feed the worms.  They will eat about 6 - 7 pounds of vegetative kitchen scraps per week.  I went to the thrift store and bought an old ice bucket to use as a kitchen scrap collector. There are prettier commercial counter top compost buckets, but I wanted to reuse something.  I've got my eye on a nice bamboo one in the Gaiam catalog....

The worms get a load of scraps every week, and eat almost all of it.  There are a few things that we've learned about what worms like and don't like.  They will eat almost everything, but they don't like corn husks or avocado peels.  They will glom onto the inside of an avocado shell and eat all the green stuff out, but they won't actually consume the peel.  You can pick up a peel and it will be packed full of worms.  They don't get to celery root , melon and squash seeds fast enough, because I've had several baby celery, melon and squash plants trying valiantly to grow in the dark of the bin.  They like egg shells, but they must be crushed really fine.  Tea leaves are a favorite.  We go through a lot of tea in a week, and my Facebook friend Ann, who runs a tea shop, will give me her tea leaves from the store.  Starbucks always has bags of coffee grounds you can get for freesies, too.

We get about 3 quarts of worm tea a week.  Worm tea is really liquid body waste. Worms can't urinate, so by pouring water over them every week, the waste gets washed off their bodies and collects in the bottom level of the bin.  Bernie calls it the "pool in the basement of the worm condo."  The castings are the solid body waste of the worms, and they tend to leave that behind as they move around.  The lowest tray has the highest concentration of compost, so that's the tray we harvest from every month.  Worm castings are an excellent organic fertilizer, and the worm tea is also a good fungicide in addition to being a fertilizer.  I know I can tell a huge difference in our daylilies just from using the worm castings and worm tea.  They are all giving us our best season ever this year.

You don't have to use the commercial bin like we have, but it sure is easier than a homemade one.  We made homemade ones at one of our daylily club meetings a few years ago, and it was much more of a hassle than this system.  

I really like knowing that I'm putting less waste in the landfills, attracting fewer varmints to our yard, and using no chemicals fertilizers to leach into the water table.

Here is a link to a slide show of how I harvest the castings every month. 

Hooray for Volunteers!

A few months ago, when we were starting the chicken project, we began by potting up all of our daylilies that were in the back yard, so we could keep them safe during construction.  During that process we came across dozens of tiny tomato plants all mixed in with the daylilies.  I confess. I know how those got there.  Our kitties' daddy/granddaddy/uncle/brother was in our yard a lot, and I admit, I chucked not a few yucky tomatoes from the garden in his general direction on several dozen occasions.  The result of my pitching practice was little tiny baby tomatoes.  That was the first of the volunteer garden army that began to spout up this season.

Next to arrive was what we thought were just weeds growing out of our compost bin.  Due to the proximity of now-deceased ficus trees and our general neglect of proper composting behaviors, the compost bin had gotten full of tree roots and had stopped being 'hot' enough to kill seeds.  I realized one day that those weren't weeds.  They were potatoes.   And nestled down in the potatoes were very pretty little Scarlet Pentas that had been pulled up to make room for something else. 

Around the same time, we noticed that our tatsoi had gone to seed in the hydroponic garden, and some seeds had fallen next to the water tank.  A brand new baby tatsoi plant is now happily growing there in the ground, without any assistance from us or the water system.  We haven't had much rain except for this past weekend, but it seems to be doing fine.  I'm leaving it there, in case the grasshoppers find it easier pickings than the tatsoi that is growing four feet up in the tower.  Maybe they'll eat that and leave my tower plants alone.

Finally came the squash.  Patty pan, to be specific, now that it has made fruit and can be identified. I noticed it when it was small, 5 or 6 leaves, smack in the middle of the yard, on the edge of what we called "the Pile of  Crap" that was chicken coop construction debris.  I skillfully managed to keep it (the PoC) out of most pictures of all of the yard elements, but trust me, it was there in all it's tetanus-potential glory. The squash is about thigh-high now, and growing really well.  I couldn't crop all the PoC elements out of the photo.  I think it's really cool that these plants have just decided to make the best of their situations and bloom where they've not-been-planted.  Yes, it's inconvenient to walk around that squash for now, but I'm glad it's here, and am honoring it's willingness to volunteer in our yard.

Greenfest Success!

This weekend our daylily club (BADS) participated in Greenfest at the University of Tampa.  It benefits friends of Historic Plant Park.  A huge festival with plants of all kinds, garden art and other gardening-related stuff, Greenfest is, in my opinion, the best of all the Bay Area Gardening Festivals.  The Master Gardeners are on hand to answer just about any question a gardener could have, and there are speakers of all types.  The  City of Tampa Wastewater Treatment plant was even handing out free bags of locally produced fertilizers. (yes, bags of people-poo)  Our club gets a great location every year, under huge oak trees.  It's one of two yearly events we hold  to make money and educate people about our favorite flowers.  Jay and I love growing daylilies because they are fuss-free and come in literally thousands of varieties. It was such a beautiful weekend (until 2 PM Sunday) that we sold out of all but 4 of our daylilies before 10 AM Saturday.  We had to call members to dig plants and bring them so we'd have more to sell.  Two of our members from Plant City saved the day Saturday by bringing more plants for the afternoon, and two other  members dug and divided plants from Brooksville and Redington Beach Saturday night to bring this morning so we'd have enough to sell on day 2.  After such a horrible winter, Tampa gardeners came out in full force to replace all the plants that didn't survive this year's crazy-cold temperatures.  I hung my gorgeous daylily quilt that my mother- and father-in-law designed and made for my birthday in our booth, and it was a huge draw. A lot of people came up to the booth just to look at the quilt, giving us a chance to tell people about daylilies and sell some plants.  Thank you, Arlene and Ray!

It doesn't seem that long ago that Jay and I bought 4 daylilies from the club at Greenfest.  Now we're the ones working the club booth, Jay is the vice president and we grow almost 80 varieties!   As a way to advertise our show and sale on May 1,  I had the idea for all of the club members to save the Daylily Journals, Magazines and Catalogs that we all get during the year and put stickers with our show and sale information on them.  We handed out probably a few hundred of them to people who bought plants, so I'm hoping we'll get even more visitors to our sale this year.  The Tampa Rose Society is joining us at our show venue, so we should get more traffic from the 'rose people,' too.  I'm glad we found one more use for all that printed material.

When I wasn't in our booth selling plants and talking to people about daylilies,  I roamed around to see the other vendors.  The lady we bought our worm compost system was there (I think a post about our worms is probably going to be coming soon).  I spent the majority of my mad money on heirloom veggie starts and herbal teas.  I got 6 heirloom tomatoes of all colors, shapes and sizes, white and yellow carrots, a 3-foot squash, a purple and a 'chocolate' sweet pepper as well as herbs to round out the last 3 sections of my square foot herb garden.  One of the herbs I got was "pukeless" cat grass.  Only 1 out of 4 of our cats liked it, and it is (so far) pukeless as advertised.  I'm going to do a post soon about heirloom seeds, too.  It's so important (to me, anyway) to preserve the rare varieties and our food heritage. After this terribly busy weekend, we're finally going to get back to building the chicken coop next weekend.  We really need to get it done so we can bring order and bring home our peeps!

We're going to a field trip WHERE?

Yesterday our Daylily Club visited Mother's Organics Humus Farm for our monthly meeting.  Mother's Organics takes yard waste from the City of Tampa and other places and turns it into compost.  The city pays Mother's to take all the yard waste from the collection sites and brings it to their facility, where they put it through a series of grinders and let it age at proper temperatures until it turns into compost.  The site is set on a slight grade, and all the water runs into ponds that are used to pump water back into the facility, so they are self sufficient and don't rely on any municipal water for their operation.  It was really interesting and inspiring to see a company making a living doing something that is good for the environment.  They let us bring buckets so we could all take home samples of the compost for use in our gardens.  Nothing like free dirt to send a bunch of middle-aged gardeners scrambling.  I've put a link here  to all the pictures I took.  Once I have a chance to go through the video I attempted to take with my FLIP, I'll amend this post and include that if there is any footage worth sharing.

Time to bring in the Ladybug Hit Squad

   I went out a few evenings ago to harvest some Tatsoi greens from the hydroponic garden.  They were covered in aphids.  I should have known, since we had ants all over the towers, and that's not a common occurrence for us.  Ants love to eat the sugary secretions the aphids leave behind, and will swarm an aphid colony and actually try to protect them.  Since we try to use only organic methods in our garden, I need to order some ladybugs from http://www.gardensalive.com/ to combat the problem.  Ladybugs are voracious aphid-eaters.  Tammy asked me why I don't get them from the local big-box home improvement store, but the few times I've seen them there, all the ladybugs were dead in the bags.  I've had great success with the ones I've gotten from Gardens Alive.  Maybe since Tammy lives in California where the ladybugs are grown, they have a fighting chance to stay alive at those stores.
   Another way we combat aphids is to plant 'sacrificial' plants.  We find plants that the aphids like better than our crops or other ornamentals like our daylilies and hibiscus.  One of those is the Guara (commonly known as "Whirling Butterfly".)  We buy a few of those and plant them near the plants we want to protect.  Some of the aphids, not all, will flock to the Guara, leaving the other plants alone... this gives them a chance to fight the aphids on their own.  The Ladybug Hit Squad will take care of the rest.

   To keep ladybugs alive over several weeks, we put them in a little screened-in wooden box, with some wood shavings and a paper towel soaked in sugar water.  The picture above is the box, but in this photo, it's housing a parsley plant with a bunch of Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on it.  I don't recommend using a little kids' Critter Keeper for the ladybugs.  Trust me.  The ladybugs are crafty and get out through the vents on the lid.  It takes quite a while to wrangle 2000 of them loose in your living room. Anyhow..... the ladybugs will glom all over the paper towel to eat the sugar water.  At night, right before sundown, I take out the paper towel (and any ladybugs that happen to be eating at the time) and put the paper towel on or near the aphid infested plant.  Ladybugs won't fly at night, so they'll settle in.  Come morning, the paper towel will be abandoned for their favorite food:  aphids.  I release some every few days, and can make a pint last a month.  The directions say you can put them in the refrigerator, but I can't bring myself to do that to them.  I just order more if I need more.