Salad Greens and The Poultry Business

We had a nice gentle rain last night (0.5 inch in the gauge) and there is nothing that compares to day-break on the morning after a rain when everything is fresh and clear especially when there is harvesting to be done. The salad patch was calling and I had to go.

Everyone should be growing salad greens. Compared to the bagged crap in the supermarkets, especially that white bread of the plant world; iceberg lettuce, there is just no comparison to what the average person can grow at home. Even if you don't have a formal garden plot, salad greens can be started in seed packs and transplanted to almost any kind of container that receives sufficient sunlight. Even seed sprouts have gone high tech with the development of microgreens. These are sprouts that are allowed to grow to the two leaf stage and then harvested as an addition to traditional salad or as a stand alone gourmet mix.

Our everyday large leaf salad mix at the Food Patch consists of cuttings of Johnny's Allstar Gourmet Lettuce Mix (containing six different lettuce varieties) and Johnny's Premium Greens Mix (consisting of spicy to mild to slightly sweet mustard greens and Chinese cabbage). I also like to add in a few young beet leaves if they are available and chard leaves up to about three or four inches in length. This gives an incredible mix with lots of color, flavor and nutritional value.

Typically during the growing season I start one nine cell pack of each mix every other week. These are sprouted inside and grown under lights until the leaves are two to three inches high. Then the packs are set out in the shade and gradually hardened to direct sun light over the course of about a week. They are transplanted to the garden and used to fill in any empty spot that is available. In the heat of high summer (July/August) indoor sprouting and development under lights is critical because many lettuce seed varieties do not sprout well when the ground is hot. At those times of the season, transplants are often placed so that they will be shaded by taller plants during the hot afternoon hours. I also have a small movable tunnel covered with shade cloth (50% transmission) for those weeks in August when it is just too hot for salad. This is not optimal but it assures us that we at least have some salad available even if it is not optimal (still better than the bagged stuff).

The other key to the perfect salad is correct harvesting. Greens should be cut early in the morning preferably before they are touched by direct sun. Clippings immediately go to cold tap water for fast chilling. I use two standard dish washing pans so that I can alternate and do two washes outside and then drain and bring inside for one last wash in the spinner. They are laid out on dish towels until almost dry but not wilted and then placed in gallon zip-loc storage bags with lots of extra air to keep the leaves from getting matted down in the frig. This mix will last for over a week but rarely does it make it that long before being devoured. One standard dish pan yields about three one gallon zip loc-bags.

Yesterday morning was spent down at the Maryland Poultry Swap. It was just down the road in Shrapsburg. It was very well attended and I was hoping to see some chicken tractors but most of the show was taken up by poultry fanciers. There were some nice examples of large stationary coops and I even ran into our local egg farmer, Rufus Martin. He was selling fresh chicken meat that his farm had slaughtered earlier that morning. Can't get much fresher than that. I did manage to run into a guy from Aquabarrel who had adapted some of their rain barrel fixtures to chicken waterers and feeders. With all of the engineering going into the chicken tractor I just couldn't pass these up especially since they are made with square buckets that should be easily adaptable to our design. Aside from figuring how to hang them they should save me a lot of additional time and trouble.

Chicken Tractor Update and First Frosts

The coop section of the chicken tractor is beginning to take shape. Last weekend I was finally able to get the roof on and the floor panel cut out. My goal is to get the coop section finished and painted before too long so this thing can overwinter out on the patio. I need to get the garage opened back up soon. We will be doing the classic spring chick thing instead of getting late summer pullets.

I also was able to do the final till of the bed that will go under the winter tunnel. Timing will be critical because it all comes down to first frost dates and photo period. The days are getting shorter and that will have a profound effect on germination and growth rate. Frost tolerance also comes into play. Since they are calling for a good soaking rain today I went ahead and seeded in a couple of varieties of kale, some spinach and beets. I plan to transplant in some bok choy and who knows what else in the coming weeks depending on the forecast.

A couple of useful links for us Western Maryland plow boys:

Maryland First (Fall) Frost Dates

Maryland Last (Spring) Frost Dates

Got to go; its off to the Maryland Poultry Swap in Sharpsburg.

Life is Good

Cooler temps and slowly shortening days means one thing; back to full production of the salad greens. This week marked the first big cut of the fall lettuce and mustard greens. Together, these make one hell of a salad mix that never fails to satisfy. We should be able to add in some young Swiss chard in the next week or so.

And this is our first trial of bok choy. This is so easy to grow, and apparently not a target for any of the usual insects, that we will have to make it a regular addition. I also hope to put some of this under the winter tunnel.

And what's a Sunday evening dinner without some stir fry from the second planting of squash together with red onions and peppers.

Fall Garden and Initial Prep for Winter

Production wise it was one hell of a summer for the Food Patch. Cooler summer temps and adequate rainfall meant only having to water the plot at most two or three times so far although it is now starting to dry out a bit more. Nearly all of the spring plantings have been pulled (except for a few beets and herbs) to make room for the fall crops. It really helped this year to move the tomatoes and peppers outside the rabbit fence to make more room for crop rotation. This will continue next year. Late season plantings of yellow squash, zucchini and cucumbers were started inside in late July so that they could be put out and get established before the days started getting shorter.  They are just about to start yielding. Late summer kale and Swiss chard are coming on as are the fall brassicas that were started inside along with the squash and cucumbers. That leaves one large area in the middle of the plot that I am holding in reserve for the winter tunnel (about where the blue bucket is sitting in the pic). I've got a small poly tunnel on a wire frame that I can move around but I also plan to put in a full-length agri-bond tunnel down the middle to see just how long into winter I can continue some kale, spinach, beets and bok choy. With lower temps and shorter days, things will definitely slow down but anything would be preferable to the foreign crap that is in the produce section of the stores in the off season. I figure as the temps decrease I can overlay the agri-bond with clear poly to get a little more protection and also slide in some gallon jugs of water to absorb heat during the day and radiate at night. I might even use some straw bales to seal up the ends depending on how things go.

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The other big news this week was the final bottling of the raspberry mead that was started way back at the end of March. It was made with berries from the Food Patch and local wild honey (Hays Apiary in Smithsburg). Technically it is a "Melomel" which is mead made with a fruit other than apple or grape. It is very light and dry (very paleo) with subtle hints of the honey and fruit. In retrospect it would have made an excellent sweet champagne if supplemented with sugar and carbonated. But I wasn't ready to tackle a sparkling wine just yet and sweet is definitely not paleo. With all of the excitement surrounding the History Channel's Viking series and in anticipation of season-2 in early 2014, I am calling this concoction "Blood of Ragnar". It is not super high in alcohol and makes a nice accompaniment to food.

Mid Summer Abundance

It's that point in the summer where the yields are high, the bugs are still under control and we are suddenly in a state of abundance mainly due to more than adequate rainfall. The key is how to maximize use while minimizing waste. Easier said than done. The tomatoes are just starting to come in but the squash, cucumbers, chard, beets, and onions are really rolling. That means lots of stir fries, salads and what ever else we can whip up on short notice.

The lettuce is on temporary hiatus having been in constant production since Memorial Day weekend until just this past week. The 50% shade cloth made a huge difference in the summer heat so we are starting new seedlings to establish a new system for mid summer under that cover. It was not until we had to buy a few bags of so-called baby gourmet lettuce at the store this week that we realized just how well we have had it and just how sub-par the commercial offerings are compared to home-grown! In the next week or so we will be starting seedlings for our fall crops and believe me we will be pulling out all of the stops this year to extend our harvest into the fall and early winter. There is just no substitute for home-grown produce. 

The other big news this week was the long-awaited laying of the keel for the chicken tractor. The design of this thing has been under development since February. There is still a lot to do and much of this project is design on the fly and quick-fix engineering. We really needed the frame to be constructed in order to see how to flesh-out the rest of the structure. Right now it is looking like we will have a hen house of approximately 36" X 45" with a back slanted roof 64" at the front peak and an external set of nesting boxes so we can easily collect eggs and maximize interior space. The open forage area will be 4' X 12' and we plan to devote most of the back yard to this contraption. Once the grass goes dormant for the winter, we will park the tractor in the garden; seeding a section in winter rye just for it. The big unknown will be whether to attempt getting pullets for the fall or wait until spring before establishing the chickens.

Summer Solstice 2013

It seems like just yesterday we were scrambling to cover everything against a late spring frost and here is it is the day after the summer solstice already. Time is definitely flying.

We've been able to stay in fresh lettuce and mixed greens for over a month now and we are getting really spoiled having our own salad mix every night especially after a long winter of the bagged stuff from CA. It has taken a lot of work keeping seed packs sprouted for succession planting. Things are getting a bit tricky now though with the summer heat. Things like the spinach and chard are beginning to bolt and set seed. We'll do the best we can to cope most likely going the micromix route until fall. Attention will now go more toward the squashes, melons, and getting a row of carrots in for the fall and early winter.

The black raspberries are just beginning to come in and today was the first initial pick. I also said good bye to the strawberries until next spring doing the very last pick of the stragglers. This was the first year that we've had about a week overlap of both berries. Definitely a hoot having a bowel of both for desert tonight.

The new tomato and pepper bed is going well. Everything was caged up last weekend and the varmint fence was taken down. Tomorrow the chard is coming out of the main garden to make room for a carrot row and the cucumber fence is going up. This year I am going to try the Johnny's pruning regime to see if I can keep the jungle under control and hopefully limit the blight that always seems to hit later in the season.

I spend most of my time concentrating on edible landscapes but the one bed that has the bird bath is mostly Echinacea and ornamental grass. The echinacea is just about ready to bloom.

Oh Shit!!!!

One of the joys of growing your own is being able to harvest at the peak of perfection and not be concerned with all of the designer chemicals that may come along for the ride. But you also have to be willing to drop what you are doing to harvest and eat, freeze, can, dry, etc. when the opportunity presents itself.

Yesterday was the first full plot pick of the strawberries. It looks like the partial bed restoration last summer was well worth the effort. Yields and size this spring are incredible; getting just under a half bushel. Looks like a long evening/night of freezing.