Fall planting

For the past couple of weeks I had been working on getting the fall crops in. Our average first frost in Phoenix is usually the first or second week in December so after the ridiculous summer heat, there's a brief season kind of like spring, as well as the root vegetable crops that overwinter with the frosts.

Spinach, Beets and Lettuce Sprouting

As usual I have more things I want to plant than space to plant them. This year we're growing three kinds of peas including a native type, six kinds of beets (my favorite!), several kinds of disgusting radishes (my husband's favorite), lots of different kinds of lettuces, some onions, lots of herbs, broccoli, carrots and a few experimental cold-tolerant tomatoes as well as some huge cherry tomatoes that over-summered. New this year are cabbages (for kraut), leeks, parsnips, turnips and kohlrabi. I've never had turnips or kohlrabi (to my knowledge) and I know the rule is not to plant things you don't like, but I'm afraid I wouldn't ordinarily like them, but I seem to like eating anything I grow, so maybe it's a better way to get me to like something that might otherwise be revolting.

This sounds like a lot more than it is, some of these varieties only get allocated a square foot or two. Our total vegetable gardening space is only about 250-300 square feet, not including the fruit trees.

Here's one of the garden beds about 10 days ago and again yesterday:






I know it's a bit crowded in there. I know when I'm planting that those tiny seeds a probably a little close but I just can't stop myself. Those plants will just have to get a new sense of personal space. I also decided that flowers aren't a total waste of garden space and put in a few. Here's a better shot of a great little snapdragon.



I hope you all are enjoying your fall gardens (if you live in a place that can grow them) or some time off getting ready for the seed catalogs to arrive!

Happy Halloween and birthday. New babies are here!

The weather started to warm up from that harsh cold front just in time to have the doors and windows open on Halloween. This begins the time of year when I am thankful for where I live. The highs are in the mid to upper 80's for the next 7 days and it's perfect out. No panting or shivering animals anywhere. Although we do have 20 new babies that just hatched last night and this morning and would prefer it was closer to 100 degrees. Here they are, Happy Birthday and Halloween to our most recent batch of Coturnix quail babies. Most of these little guys will be sold to help pay for feed and other things I need around the tiny farm. This brings the total of birds hatched here in 2009 to 158.



We celebrated with a batch of pumpkin pancakes, made from a native pumpkin (Mayo Blusher Squash) I picked back in July and just now got around to cooking. MMmm pumpkin eating season has begun!

Grinding corn and mesquite flour

A week or so ago I got out the dried ears of flour corn and the dried honey mesquite bean pods to make flour. You can grind corn with just about anything (grain mill, coffee grinder etc) but mesquite is much trickier. You'll mess up most appliances and mills if you try to grind the pods in them. Once a year a hammer mill is brought from Tucson to Phoenix and you can grind your mesquite and carob pods for a nominal fee but I decided to do it the old fashioned way.
When I was a kid my parents had this metate as yard decoration. When I grew up and got a house, I brought it here for practical use. Here's me grinding some corn:


I had a miserable flour corn crop and my two small mesquite trees were only planted last fall, I still got a cup or so of each kind of flour. I'm really looking forward to next year or maybe 5 years from now when I get lots. There are plenty of mesquite trees to harvest from in the area, but most of those are not the right kind of mesquite and the flour tastes a tiny bit skunky after the initial sweet flavor. The flour made from honey mesquite basically tastes like you ground up some sugary mesquite bbq flavored chips and mixed them with your flour. MMMMMMM!


Tomorrow, a generous member of the rare fruit growers club has offered to give me some dragonfruit cuttings.....

Chicken Book is Published!

So many of you know that I had been working with Greg Peterson (of the Urban Farm) on a small pocket guide to keeping chickens called Fowl Play. There are several chicken books out there already, including one with a similar title that came out around the same time, but this is a small what-you-really-need-to-know guide. Easy to refer to with clear information. Here's the Amazon link: Fowl Play: Your Guide to Keeping Chickens in the City
It's neat to have an ISBN number.

Still Here! Fall Planting

Like a lot of blog people, I've been on a bit of a summer recess. Both because it's been 115 all summer and not much has been going on and because I've been really busy in my job as a painter getting ready for shows.

Here is a brief summary of what's happened at the Tiny farm this summer: We had a new batch of Coturnix quail, I sold most of them as babies and had about 17 left, of those 11 were males and I kept 1 male and the 6 females. I'm not sure why we had such a high rate of males this batch. It was probably close to 75%. The muscovy ducks, Daphne and Delilah, got more and more territorial and started attacking everything around. It was very stressful for the chickens and eventually for me when they began running to attack me any time they heard me coming. They're strong birds and broke skin a few times. I think they were mad about my constant nest raiding. They went to a nearby home where there are 9 other Muscovies and no chickens. I think they'll be very happy there and since there are males around, they might get to have ducklings some day. We lost one of our old chickens so now we are down to 6. I try not to buy chicks more frequently than once every 2 years to prevent myself from getting overrun with less productive chickens in the future. It's a strange feeling to have so few birds in the pen.

Now on to the more exciting stuff! Today is significant for two reasons-- one, it is my last day in my 20's... two, because it is the first day of fall planting! Today I'll be planting beets, which I've been waiting for all summer. I bought some new heirlooms so amongst the usual Early Wonder, Detroit Dark Red etc. I'll be planting an albino beet, which is a very sweet white sugar beet from Holland and a beet called Crapaudine (They should have had a naming contest if that was the best they could come up with) which is supposedly a variety that's over 1000 years old. It looks more bark-like but I hear it has amazing flavor.

This week I'll also be planting Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Danvers Carrots, Nantes Carrots and St. Valery carrots, Gold Princess Onions, Texas Early Grano Onions and several varieties of radish. Peas, Garlic, Lettuce and Parsnips will go in during the beginning of October once the highs get down below 100 consistently. Fall can't get here soon enough!

Ugh....HEAT

This heat is ridiculous. Hottest July on record. I can't remember the last day that the high was below 112, with most days being 115+. It's going to be 120+ for the next few days. The weather report always seems to be 5 degrees cooler than it is at my house, I put a second thermometer up because I thought maybe the first one was wrong. I went out and did a little tree pruning the other day because it was "only" 110, a beautiful day for yardwork.
It wouldn't be that big of a deal if I could just stay inside in my nearly pleasant 85 degree home, but if the chickens and quail are going to survive (the muscovies have a much higher tolerance for heat) I have to bring them ice for their water baths every few hours. I know those of you in the NW are dealing with 105 temps that must seem out of this world to you with little or no air conditioning, me and my birds sympathize.

Sorry for all the complaining. On a brighter note, the baby quail are doing well and I'm looking forward to replacing some of my crazy/aggressive birds with them in about a month.

Quail hatch #2!

This past weekend we had our second round of quail eggs hatch. These were all from eggs that my quail or my friend's quail laid. They hatched pretty early, days 14 and 15, and a couple on day 16 instead of the usual 17. I think this may have something to do with the fact that the eggs were laid in 100-110 degree weather, that may have given the ones that hatched a jumpstart on the incubation.

We had 39 birds hatch out of 92 eggs set, which is a meager 42% hatch rate, but a lot of the set eggs were old and were stored in far less than ideal conditions, at 85 degrees instead of the recommended 55-65 degrees. Three birds died, two of those were very sickly runts from the beginning and one I think was smothered or trampled the first night. Overall I'm pleased with the results and I'm going to do another hatch or two in the fall.

I am thinking about selling sexed quads (one male, three females) for $17.50 or you can add another female and make it an even $20. The birds would all be 3-4 weeks old. This is much cheaper than you can get them at any feed store around here. This seems like a good deal for the buyer and compensates me for my time, feed and hatching costs. I wonder how many takers I'd find around town.