How not to plant seeds

Posted on June 12, 2012 by jkmcintyre

Late emerging pole bean seedling is all chewed up

Last month I got lazy.  I put beans in the ground and then waited for it to rain.  Eventually it did.  Then I waited for the bean plants to emerge.  This should take 10-14 days.  Mine took longer and germination was poor.  Some varieties barely showed up at all.

It turns out there is a good reason to water your seeds after you sow them; faster emergence.  While my seeds were waiting for rain, critters big and small were chewing at their protective skins, resulting in all sorts of compromised.

The plants that did eventually emerge were weak and were often attacked soon after emergence.  No esta bueno.  Commercial croppers often avoid this problem by coating seeds in pesticide prior to planting, a practice that was recently implicated in honeybee declines.  Yeah, not going to be doing that.

So (kick kick self), I am resowing most of my beans.  And I will water them upon sowing. It is warmer now, so a comparison will be difficult.  Perhaps next year (when I am less desperate to get this show rolling) I can do a side-by-side planting water vs not to definitively test my hypothesis.

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Dumb Cluck

Posted on June 10, 2012 by jkmcintyre

“Cluck – cluck – cluck…” goes the broody hen.  If the weather is good I open the door of her broody box, and after a minute she makes a big squawking show of taking a walk.

She flaps her wings, she charges other chickens and pecks them into submission (or avoids being pecked in turn by higher-ups), she rips at a fallen plant, she takes a dust bath.  Oh, and empties her much-backed-up bowels.  Impressive.

Then she goes back into the broody box, “Cluck – cluck – cluck…”.

Except today I lost track of her as she wandered about.  I trusted her to take care of business and return to her eggs.  Once before she walked in to the coop where she grabbed a snack and came back out.  Today on an egg collecting round I found her sitting in one of the tiny nest boxes of the coop warming some else’s (unfertilized) eggs.  Calamity Jane, you dumb cluck.

I scooped her up (“Cluck – cluck – cluck”) and delivered her to the broody box where she eagerly went to ‘her’ eggs and sat back down.  I just hope her eggs didn’t get too cold.  Four more days to go…

UPDATE: Hatched!

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Put a cork in it

Posted on June 6, 2012 by jkmcintyre

This spring our Meyer lemon tree needed replanting.  I have been saving corks for several years now; my big plan is to insulate Scott’s office wall – if I ever accumulate enough.

Cork collection

However, when I saw this idea in an urban farming magazine, I decided to sacrifice some of my precious corks for the project.

Cork mulch around the potted Meyer lemon

Turning the corks upside down exposed the ends variably-stained by wine

Corks covering the soil will reduce dehydration – a common problem with (my) houseplants

I really like the random coloured pattern of the stained cork ends.  Ideally the corks would sit well inside the pot, but Scott had already transplanted the tree before I remembered my plan.  Hopefully it will work!

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Egg, Interrupted

Posted on May 31, 2012 by jkmcintyre

It is now Day 8 in our 21-day quest for baby chicks. A few days ago when I checked on Calamity Jane in her broody box I found an egg laying by its lonesome on the ground outside the nest. Rejected.

Rejected egg lying on the ground outside the nest

I don’t actually know what happened, but I know that hens will sometimes exclude bad eggs. I candled it and could see the 7-d air sac and a fibrile net on one side confirming that the egg was fertilized and progressing ‘normally’. Maybe it was bad in some other way. Maybe she accidentally pushed it out as she was reorganizing. In retrospect I could have tried putting it back in the nest, but I didn’t know how long it had been out. One less Lavender Orpington egg. 😦

This morning I found one of the Delaware eggs crushed next to the food. Again, I don’t know if it was pushed out first or if it had a weak shell and she crushed it by accident. Either way, that’s two less eggs to sit on. Keeping my fingers crossed that this rate of attrition does not continue!

Next installment: Dumb Cluck

Previous installment: Broody Loves the Box

[Read about CJ’s previous attempt to hatch eggs]

Posted in baby chickens, broody hen, chickens, eggs, nest boxes, update | Tagged , | 3 Comments