Moving!

It looks like the moving is official.  We'll be moving by the end of October or November.  The new space has lots of gardening and chicken room and already has 4 or 6 raised beds built in!  We'll be able to build a new chicken run first so that the chickens will be easier to move I think that's the only thing I'm worried about. It was so much work building the first one! I guess that means we should be really good at building the 2nd one right?!? lol

There's a lot of planning to be done but we're going to try to move as much of the soil and plants as we can and hopefully the peach and plum tree too!  This is going to be an adventure! Good thing I love adventures ;)

....yay? sunshine!

Wow.  to expand on my last post summer has arrived with a 20 degree jump in temperature overnight.  We've gone from mid 70's (or lower!) to mid 90's.  It is HOT!  The garden is loving it - the tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini have visibly grown over the last 2 days and I'm sure we will see even more growth in the rest of the garden.  Jen just planted more seeds yesterday: bush beans, summer squash, spaghetti squash and a crazy squash (Just what IS a crazy squash?!?).  Hopefully these will all come up soon.

The chicken run door is finally built - I borrowed a jigsaw and a speed square from the tool library and even made the awesome mitered corners on the door frame and made braces with other scrap wood so it would stay square then covered it with mesh and cross brace.  All that we need now is to buy the hinges. Funny thing about building is that when something is only a 1/4" off of square (say a doorjam) it makes a huge difference in building a door.  I cut our door a 1/2" narrower than the doorjam but since it didn't entirely work  apparently it would have been better if there was a 1" difference width wise.  Who knew it made such a difference?!?  oh well, the door still works and is nice and square - it just looks odd without a square door jam.  I think I put enough braces in that it won't warp with the sun too.  Once the door is installed the run will be complete!!!

Now that most of the major projects are done I'm already off to thinking about more projects: widen the tomato bed for next year?  plant a wisteria vine on the fence? clean out the basement and make space to hang the potatoes, onions and garlic I hope to have this fall?  dig out new flower beds along the front walk and fill with bulbs, daylilies, crocosmia and peonies?  Plant more blueberries and maybe an apple tree?

Not sure what all of that we will do, I've got the wisteria vine in a bucket of water to see if it will root, planning on cleaning out the basement this next week and I will be keeping my eyes open for blueberries on sale.  We've been talking about getting some baby ducks when they are available at the feed store so we'll have to find a place to put their pool.  We found several smaller varieties we liked online but we'll probably buy whatever we can get locally so we don't have to order them online.  I don't like the idea of ordering animals through the mail - it just seems cruel especially in our hot weather right now.

We will have to update with some new pictures tomorrow.  Oh - and in some other good news the hot weather is killing the aphids infecting the plum tree, hopefully it will recover soon.

After discussing the trials and tribulations this year with other gardening family members I don't feel so bad about losing so many plants to the slugs. Seems like everyone is having this issue. I need to ask my sister where she got that green house for my mom and how much it cost. I am quite envious of her tomato plants, and it isn't too late to set one up this year to extend the season for some of my tomato seedlings and at least gather some seeds for next year.
Still need to build the upper half of the chicken run, not to mention build the door. Its wet and cool outside but we might still making it a work day, because we have to get it done as soon as possible!

chicken run is getting done!

Here's some pics of the chicken run, it's about 1/2 way done!  We even got sit on our "chicken watching bench" and  let the chickens explore their new home.  I think they like it :)

It was a long process, digging holes is HARD!  the whole album is on FB: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf#!/album.php?aid=14803&id=1756879312&ref=pb

chicken run 2 and gardening updates

We began the day (yesterday) clearing the space of all of the knotweed that had grown in and raking out the Photinia leaves.  We also pruned back the Photinia that was growing in the way.  We've set the run back far enough that the coop will be able to be partially in the shade but the chickens will still have mainly sun.  At least, that's the goal. Home Depot still doesn't have the mesh instock that we want to use so we are going to look into buying it online, it's just a 1" heavy duty plastic mesh, nothing special but it's significantly less expensive than the other products we've found.  The run only needs to keep out daytime things anyways since the chickens will be in their coop at night.  This afternoon I will most likely finish digging the corner posts then tomorrow dig the other 2 post holes.  6 total.  whew!

 Not much going on for gardening.  We're finally getting some sun so hopefully that will encourage things to grow.  I'm attempting cucumbers for the 3rd time and they seem to finally be growing.  I ended up buying starts about twice as big as I normally would but with all the rain the seedlings couldn't grow fast enough to out compete the pests.  Nothing is really dying but to compare by this time last year we were already eating green beans, tomatoes and zucchini's.  This year we have baby plants still :/  


We're starting to research more cold weather veggi's to try to extend our growing season which should be fun but right now we're studying for finals.   After next week I'll have more time to devote to reading fun gardening books!  Or at least that's the idea ;)

 

Chicken run!

This morning we were up early to head to the West Seattle Tool Library http://www.sustainablewestseattle.org/tool-library/ to borrow a post hole digger and begin building the chicken run.  I'm not sure how many post holes I have to dig yet (6 or 8 I think) but it sounds like a ton of work!  Apparently by signing up for my library account online last night I am the first member of the tool library!  This means that I get to be put down as a founding memmber (yay, me! lol) and Jen & I will have our picture in the West Seattle Blog and the Sustainable West Seattle blog. Um. yay?  If I'd known that was a consequence I might have at least taken a shower this morning instead of rolling out of bed, putting some work clothes on and a hankerchief on my head.  oops. The pictures should be awesome.

so.  Now that I've had coffee, the chickens are out playing in their dog crate and the sun is out it's time to go sort all of that free wood we got a month ago (or more?) and decide how big this run will be and exactly where it's going.  We have a rough idea of course, but not a set one. Sounds like a long day of working to me but the chickens will be really glad when we are done!

Another thing is the Photinia trees, they are toxic to grazing animals, but are they toxic to chickens?  Do I need to worry about raking all the fallen leaves out of the run before the chickens go in there?  I can't seem to find this info online, I may need to start emailing other Seattle chicken people and see what they know.