Front Yard: 8 Months Later

Eight months ago we landscaped our front yard with shrubs, flowers, and bulbs. I am glad most of them survived the heat last year as our place tends to get hotter in the summer. These are some of the pictures that we took this morning.

MP3!

Left: Molly (yellow); Polly (brown); Penny or 3 (black w/white spots)

Here's an update of our new flock of chickens. They are exactly a month and eleven days old, and we let them out with our other hen, Ruby in the backyard. This will helps them adapt and acclimate to the outside temperature. It is really fun to watch them with Ruby when she towers over them like a mother hen. When the chicks are ready to go outside, we will put them inside the hen house with Ruby when it is dark. I used this method with my last flock of chickens, as in the morning the old and new chickens will get up and thought they'd known each other for years. Wish we humans are that easy to fool.

Spring is finally here!

The sun is up, the weather is nice, and OSH is having a sale! It would be a shame to sit at home and not to be out in the garden. I skipped breakfast and drove down to the store and picked up a tray of different vegetable seedlings--tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, basil, beans, and some annuals. The minute I got home, I am in the backyard ready for the challenge. We have a decent size backyard (2500 sq. ft) with two vegetable boxes in the middle, an apple, peach, apricot and plum trees, a chicken coop and a greenhouse that John builds for me. Too much to do---I need manpower!
Today, I shall start working on the vegetable boxes and the little patch adjacent to it. I weeded, removed dead debris, shoveled, tilled and amended the dirt with compost and chicken manure. I am not an expert in gardening, and I learned alot from Kwan and by reading about it in books and periodicals. I learned about the importance of plant rotation, companion planting and pest management. By doing so, this will helps repel and attracts beneficial bugs to the environment. Some plants enhance the growth rate and others help flavor other plants, thus creating a balanced and holistic system to the garden. In other words, eco-system, a word that is commonly used nowadays, as more people are growing their own food, raising chickens for eggs, and buying from local farmers. I used to think that organic produce are way overprice and a niche to the consumer---now I think otherwise. Farming, either organic or inorganic is laborious and time consuming. Organic produce takes more time to grow, environmentally safer and has more flavors.
A few useful resources: (I plan to update this list frequently) Mouse over bold text to read more.....
Companion Planting
California Master Gardener Handbook
Community Support Agriculture (CSA)
Clark Summit Farm
Capay Farms
USDA-FSA (Farm Loans Program)
Logees
Turtle Tree Seeds