Whats Growing in the Garden - Summer Season

Strawberries

Arugula

Spinach 

Romain Lettuce

Butter Lettuce

Rainbow Chard

Baby radish greens and baby beet greens

A huge radish

Italian Heirloom Romanesco Zucchini

How to fix a Broody Hen

A broody hens is basically a hen that thinks she sitting on eggs that are fertile and is waiting for them to hatch.  Since we don't have a rooster there is no way this hen is going to hatch any eggs.  Honey, one of our Buff Orpingtons, is our only hen who goes broody, if you allow a hen to go broody and don't break her of the behavior she will stop producing eggs for 30 something days and I've read it could be contagious to the rest of the flock.   When Honey goes broody she will spend her entire day in the coop and sleep in the laying boxes, she will also ruffle her feather and make strange chicken growls at you if you try and go near her.  So, to break the hen of the behavior you have to remover from the main coop and put her in a cage of some sorts with a chicken wire bottom of the cage.  its important also that you keep the hen some where safe at night, I keep her in my kitchen, and during the day you want to make sure the hen can see the coop... basically your making her forget about the behavior.  This usually takes 3 days and 3 night on average for us to break her...

Honey in the kitchen

Honey in the broody cage out side during the day

Dahlia trying to steal honey's food... 

After the third night in the morning I'll take honey out of the cage and set her free, later that night ill check to see if shes back in the laying boxes, if so she goes back in the cage for another day or so, if not then she back to laying eggs soon!  But usually it only takes 3 days and 3 nights.

Scales on the Blueberry Bushes...

We recently moved our three year old blue berry bushes from the back yard to the front yard.  While moving one of the bushes we noticed these reddish brown bumps on its leaves and branches.  Todd said it looked like Scale... Scale!?!  "Whats Scale?".. I thought to myself.  I took some time to do a little research and found out that scale is a pest ... its a bug that forms a hard shell around its self a attaches its self on to the leaves and branches of a plant.  The mother then lays eggs, when the eggs hatch they eat the mom, and brake out of the shell to form new shells of their own.  While attached on the plant they basically suck nutrients from the plant.  A common indicator that your plant may have Scale are ants.  The Scale are known to secrete a sweet liquid that ants seem to love.. and sure enough the bush was covered in ants.

Heres a photo I took of one of the branches of my poor blueberry bush.  I also found out through research that the only was to get rid and these nasties is by wiping your plant down with rubbing alcohol and a Q tip or round cotton swab.  This was a bit much for me to stomach so I ended up pruning the shit out of the bush... updates will come.

Lucy Urban Garden is experimenting with aquaponics!!!!

What is aquaponics?  Aquaponics is a sustainable food production system that combines raising fish with hydroponics in a symbiotic environment.  Everything is working together here! =)

Here is our experimental set up... it all started with this permanent rock fountain we had in our backyard.  For the last three years it was filled with dirt and used by the chickens as one of their many dust baths.  This year after being unsuccessful at moving the thing we thought long and hard about how we could use it other then just using it as a fountain where it just sucks up energy and doesn't produce or give anything back to us.... thats when the idea of aquaponics came in to play.  The bottom half of the fountain will have fish in it, the fish poop will then be pumped up into the raised bed, the roots of the plants will feed off the poop and filter out the water, once the bed is full the bell siphon is triggered which then drains the bed so the roots will not rot, this cycle continues every 15 min.  This type of gardening system uses 10% of the water it takes to run a traditional garden set up with soil.  If this experiments works for us then we will slowly convert the rest of the yard to an aquaponic set up!!!

You dont have to spend hundreds on a set up like this... at least we didn't: We were able to get the pallets, and a 55 gallon drum for free (we shop the FREE Craigs list section all the time, and drive around your neighborhoods, youll be surprised what people leave in their front yards with free signs on them!!).  Our local hydro garden store was nice and discounted the pump and growing medium for us.  Total cost of materials came to about an $80 project. =)

We decided on using clay grow rocks as our growing medium

And Todd figured out how to make a bell siphon that works like a charm!!! He's brilliant =)

We will keep this project updated, currently we are working on cycling the system, which can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month or more depending on the quality of your water.  To help cycle the system we planted some left over baby pickling cucumber plants and bought some cheapy feeder fish.. 10 for $2.00, we are also testing the waters pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate everyday and keeping record of the changes... 

Baby pickling cucumber plant

The fish

Meet the Chickens

The crew

Our chickens are free range chickens, meaning we do not keep them in their coop, the coop door remains open all day so the chicken can run around then garden, dig, chase flies, hunt worms, find shady hiding spots, run, and be happy.  We chose to fence in the garden rather then fence in the chickens!

Honey is a 2 year old Buff Orpington.  She lays large brownish pink eggs, goes broody on a regular basis (and is our only hen who goes broody) and loves to eat those big juicy horned tomato worms!

Dahlia is a 1 year old Silver Laced Wyandotte.  She lays large brown eggs and is definitely a rebel of the pack and is a great spider hunter!

Rosie is a 1 year old Easter Egger.  She lays medium blue green eggs and is a snug bug! She loves to be held and cuddled by her mama =)  And I love holding her!

Lucy is a 2 year old Easter Egger.  She lays large blue eggs, she's the first to go to bed, the first to wake up, and the first to start squawking loudly early in the morning for her scratch.

Batman is a 2 year old Golden Laced Wyandotte.  She lays large brown eggs and is the alpha female of the bunch... yes she can be a bitch! 

Betty is a 2 year old Buff Orpington.  She lays large baby pink eggs.  Betty loves blue berries, having a conversation with you in her sweet peep chick language and loves to be held ... by anybody who comes to visit the gardens.

Eggs produced by our six lovely ladies.

Stringing Tomatoes

This year we were gifted four heirloom tomato plants, two Orange Banana Heirloom paste tomatoes, which we have in the front yard, and on the side yard we have a Cherokee Purple Heirloom and a Black Brandywine Heirloom.  We've grown these types in the past and are fully aware of how uncontrollably massive one tomato plant can get.  So this year we decided to string three to four main stems off one plant and diligently prune all other suckers.  Theoretically this will keep the plant size "manageable" for the space we have, support the tomatoes, train the tomatoes to grow vertically, and produce better tasting tomatoes.  I got so excited learning about this technique that I went out and purchased a San Marzano paste tomato plant, which now lives in between the two Orange Banana Heirlooms in the front yard, and a Yellow Brandywine Heirloom which I'm experimenting growing in a container on the side yard. 

Stringing Tomatoes: You basically tie loosely a ring around the main stem with garden vinyl tie tape ... this stretchy tape will allow room for the main stem to grow without harming it.  Then tie a the string to the tape, wrap the string around a main stem and secure the string on some kind of support "bar" above the tomatoes as you can see in the pictures.  Each main stem you keep gets its own string!  

When we planted the tomatoes we planted them their stem deep into the ground with our compost from the garden and sprinkled the top soil with some organic tomato food.  About 2 weeks ago i fed them lightly with kelp and fish emulsion and plan to continue to do so every 2 weeks while they grow.  As they grew bigger I started pruning the suckers and trimming the bottom leaves, just enough so that the leaves where not lying on the top soil, i do this to prevent disease.

Updates will come!    

Edible Flowers at Lucy Urban Garden

We feel it's a bit silly to grow anything in your yard that you can't consume including flowers ... heres an on going/ updated list of edible flowers we have been experimenting with in our gardens;

Borage: Taste very similar to sweet cucumber and is used in companion planting with beans, greens, strawberries, and tomatoes.  This year we planted ours in the herb garden and strawberry patch.  These things grow like weeds!!!! When I was at the nursery there were 3 borage plants that were small and not looking so hot.  The nursery sold them to me for half price.. I took them home and can't believe how fast they grew!!!

Lavender: Has a perfumey, sweet, with citrus overtone flavor.  We like to use our lavender in our jams, raw chocolates, the bees and humming birds help themselves to it quite often as well =) Bees = pollination = food!  We have one lavender in a large pot and the other in the ground, both get a good about of morning and afternoon sun.. both seem happy!

Marigolds: Yes you can eat marigolds, they can have a spicy, clove like or grassy flavor, they can carry a citrus like flavor as well and are a great companions for tomatoes to help keep pests away!!  Easy to grow, ours are planted with our tomatoes and seem to do well in full sun and partial sun/shade.

Fuchsia: These beauties have a tangy flavor.  Our Fuchsias are doing well in pots and seem to like morning sun, afternoon shade and well drained moist soil.

Hibiscus: Has a citrus to squash like flavor and can be used in tea and in cooking!  Our baby hibiscus plants are still settling in our raised flower bed... they are getting full sun right now.. i will update on their growth progress...

Snapdragons: Bland to bitter flavor, used mostly as a garnish ... but you can still eat them!  They seem to be doing well in our raised garden bed with full sun ... not dead yet...

Rose: Roses can take on a variety of different flavors, it depends on the variety you get.  Our baby rose plant is planted in our herb garden, I will update on its progress...