Sinfonian’s Square Foot Garden

For now at least, I’ve moved over to http://sinfonians-garden.blogspot.com/ and will be only posting there.  I like the format well enough and I can’t guaranty this site will remain up.  I am keeping it active as I get hundreds of pings to my potato bin page here, though on my new blog you can post comments finally!

Oh, in case you’re wondering, I have been blogging over on the new site, so if you haven’t gone over there and followed or whatever, please do so.  Also, change your bookmarks, who knows how long this site will be up.

Enjoy your garden!

FOLKS, SORRY TO SAY MY FT2GARDEN SITE IS UNSTABLE AT BEST, SO I AM MOVING IT TO A BLOGSPOT FORMAT. PLEASE FIND ME AT http://sinfonians-garden.blogspot.com/

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND ENJOY YOUR GARDEN!

I will keep this up for the time being and as I have tons of traffic to this site (mostly in the Potato Bin page), I may keep it if possible.  Contacting the site owner has been unsuccessful so I’m resorting to snail mail.  We shall see.

Garden wise, I planted three soil blocks of Green Wave mustard greens. Three soil blocks is all I could salvage from un-germinated seeds under my light system and I wasn’t up for making new blocks just for greens.  I plan on planting my brassicas this weekend, so some of my favorite veggies are going to start germinating.  Can’t tell if I like broccoli or cauliflower more.  Likely cauliflower because my wife hates it but found she loves it garden fresh.  I of course will be succession planting to not get all the harvest at once.  Two weeks worked well last year.  It would have worked better if I hadn’t gone on vacation right when they were ready.

Well, off to see about importing all this to my new site.  Be patient as I tweek the new site to work. Right now I’m all about saving content.

Wish me luck and enjoy your garden!

Not much in the way of garden topics tonight.  First off, I wanted to let you know to check out my new page, 4) Hoop Covers.  I’ve been toying with the page for a year or two, and just decided to finish it, especially since I came to the realization the hoops could be used to tractor my chickens in the beds in Fall.  Also, I just realized that this theme does not allow comments on pages.  I’ve got hundreds of posts nobody can see because the theme won’t allow it.  Grrr

Next, I wanted to apologize if you got yet another message that the site’s been suspended.  I’ve tried to contact the site owner, without success.  Since I don’t own the site, or pay for it, I have no say.  My wife thinks I should switch to Google, but I see a few problems with that.  I don’t have a clue if or how I could save all my posts and transfer them over.  If I couldn’t transfer my blog in its entirety, I wouldn’t want to move.  Second, I would likely lose all the traffic I get here, which used to be formidable… And a distant last would be learning a whole new set-up.  Ah well, something to think about.

About the only garden activities I’ve had of late are the occasional sprouting of tomatoes, which go up to the light system.  Boy are these taking a long time to germinate.  One of the latest to germinate was one of the new varieties.  I am worried because it germinated right at the edge of the cup, not in the middle where I planted it.  I’m afraid it won’t root well right near the edge and I’ll lose it.  I may pot that one up sooner to give it more dirt on that side. 

I also got from my folks a few of their pill bottles so I can try my hand at building a new soil block maker.  Mine works fine, but I kind of wanted the taller one. I get so many stubby soil blocks that I wanted them to start taller.  Just what I need, more projects!  EG I’m not!

On the chicken front, I’ve finished Chickens for Dummies and am still bumping around Backyard Chickens.com (see sidebar).  In my research, I’m now concerned that the 4×8 ark I’m planning will be too small for 4 chickens.  At 32 SF, that’ll hold a maximum of 3 birds, not 4.  I don’t want to make it bigger as it would become awkward to move around daily, especially if I wanted to lift it over the fence to have them hang out in the front yard for a change.

Lastly, my wife’s Facebook friend has started a blog.  She’s a chef and it’s mostly a gardening/self sufficiency blog.  And where I got a boost in 2009 from the Seattle Times, she just got one from CNN… in other words, I’m not in her league.  Hehe.

Well, there are several random thoughts, but that’s how my mind’s going today.

Enjoy your garden!

Quick housekeeping issue.  When I fixed the posting issue I opened up so anyone could register.  Since that time I’ve had a SLEW of folks registering for my blog.  That is awesome, however, I haven’t heard from any of you.  I hate to assume that folks are registering for any other reason than to learn about gardening and our adventure in sustainability.  So, I would like to hear from folks that don’t post regularly.  Just a quick line or two saying what why you are here or what your garden is like, or how you found me.  Anything really.  I just want to know that I got 30 odd registrations in a few days because folks care about what I’m doing here.  The last thing I want to do is to delete the registrations of anyone or change the settings.

Ok, enough of that. I finally made it over to my father-in-laws to chat about the coop design from a carpentry standpoint.  Gotta love having a Master Carpenter in the family.  Anyway, he was a big help, even if he did keep relating all our fancy coops, brooders and research to his previous experience with chicken raising.  All he did back in the day was let them free range and collect a few eggs a week.  That sure is one way to do it.  What I found out about our design is that it’s solidly built and should work well for us.  To make mine lighter I’ll use 2×3s instead of 2×4s except for the trex on the bottom to keep it from rotting.  I also found I should use tons of L brackets to firm up the structure so it doesn’t torque if and when it’s moved.  Speaking of moving, since I don’t plan on moving it regularly, we’re not going to put wheels on it. Instead we’ll just use a hand truck to drag it where it needs to go.  Lastly, he recommended for a natural light source to take the entry door for coop cleaning an feeding and make it out of plexiglass.  That side gets late evening sun so hopefully it won’t heat up the place too much.  Oh and of course he offered to help build it… YAY!

I finally got digital copies of my coop design so I thought I’d upload them here.  Feel free to comment on them, though I warn you, they’ve been altered a bit, especially in the roof design.

The new roof design will be a slant shed-type roof to reduce the weight.  No trusses.  Oh and of course aside from the bottom 2×4, the rest will be 2×3s now.  Also at the roofline will be a 6 inch gap in the plywood wall to allow for ventilation.  I hope that adding louver vents in the back side will create appropriate air flow rather than that dreaded draft!

Let’s see, what else.  The chicken wire is going to be welded wire or the like to keep out predators.  We’ve got a bad raccoon problem, and that’ll keep them and anything else, out.

As you can see by the last pic, we’ll have 2 nesting boxes and an electrical hook-up.  It’ll be one that requires an extension cord to power the outlets on the inside.

Enjoy your garden!

Well, let me start by saying that KitsapFG wasn’t entirely right when she said my comments would pick up after I fixed the comment problem…  Either that or I’m losing my touch to get folks to disagree with me… hehe.

Anyway, I’ve been doing nothing garden wise since my last post.  Well, that’s not entirely true. I have been mother henning my tomato seeds in the kitchen, trying to force them to germinate.  I’ve been alternating them from one side of the stove to the other in the hopes of providing them the optimum germination environment.  On one side there’s the direct air from the heat vent to warm the soil, but I can’t use the lamp there because it causes too much heat.  The other side gets no benefit from the heat, but the lamp with an incandecent bulb generates too much heat also. 

In general I’m finding that the fluffy seedling mix I used for my latest plantings of more Legend, Stupice and Stiletz tomato seeds dries out very fast, at least on top where the seed is sitting.  What that means is I am regularly spraying the cups with water.  It’s insane the amount of energy I’m putting into these seeds.  Boy I need a job, and not just for the benefits…

On the chicken front, this evening I had a good chat with my brother who’s the cause of my chicken obsession.  We worked through several issues in about 30 minutes, some I didn’t even know I had!  I hate to say that I called my dumb brother a genius on more than one occasion tonight (I always say he’s the dumb one because I did far better in school than he, hehe inside joke).

We were tentatively planning on two separate chicken doors in our small coops.  One would lead down into the mini-run below the coop, the other would lead out to the yard where I could deposit them directly into my ark.  We decided to change the gate for the mini-run from the 6 foot side to the 3 foot side.  Hopefully I have the space to place the ark on the side of the coop and then let them just come out into the ark.  However, as I type I find one problem with that. If they don’t want to come, I can’t very well reach in 6 feet to get them… something to consider.  Gotta love designing your own coop.

Now for the reason I called him a genius.  He totally changed my mind about the type of ark I would build.  My plan was to build a hoop-house type ark our of PVC, though mine would be adjustable in length to fit on any of my garden beds during the fall to let the hens till and fertilize my soil for the next year.  I worked hard to design a way to make that work using different sized pipe for the bottom supports such that they could slide into one another to change the lenght of the run.

The genius part was when he made me realize that I didn’t NEED an ark for my garden beds.  I already have one!  I was going to put a hoop house covered in bird netting into my beds.  I already HAVE hoop houses for all my beds.  All I need to do to make them chicken friendly is to replace the 4-mil plastic for bird netting and presto, instant chicken ark!  Brilliant. I can’t believe in all my pondering I didn’t think of that until tonight.  My excuse is that I was spending so much time learning to care for the hens and building my coop from scratch that I hadn’t spent much time on the ark.

So instead, both my brother and I are going to build light-weight triangular arks, similar to the ones with plans for sale on the net.  Ours will be simple 2×2 frame construction with light 1/4″ plywood on 1/3 of the ark for rain cover and maybe a nesting box, though I do like my idea to use my cat carrier as a portalbe nesting box. 

As you can see, nothing is in stone yet, but we are rapidly approaching the time to build our coops (he wants them built before the arrival of the day-old chicks).  Decisions are going to have to be made soon, and I need to get over to see my father-in-law for his take on lightening the coop to make it more mobile.

Fun stuff! Enjoy your garden!