GARDEN DADDY & URBAN FARM WIN BEE HIVE AT LOCAL BEEKEEPER'S SHORT COURSE TODAY

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm! Today I attended the Jackson Area Beekeeper's Association annual keepers short course. I must say I learned all I ever thought I wanted to know about beekeeping. It was very interesting and I had no idea some of the problems facing not only the bees themselves but for keepers as well.
I have long known about the hive issues going on as far as hive collapse, mite problems and really total disappearance of feral bees as a whole. Beekeepers are in a huge dilemma with keeping so many diseases and just pests in general from destroying the hive and total hive loss. I have learned that the cost of getting honey is about the same as this urban farm's cost of a dozen of this Garden Daddy's eggs...about $10.00 a dozen...and thus around $10.00 per pint. Just kidding on both counts but the "cost per" is not the issue but what real cost is worth the price of pure, fresh and home grown food stuffs. Truly, the eggs from this urban farm are NOT $10.00/dozen but are almost equal with store bought "natural eggs". Of course ALL EGGS ARE NATURAL! But with the ones I have here I consider them basically free range (they range free in their enclosure outside), completely steroid free, non-medicated in no way at all and I only use the natural product of Diatomaceous Earth for both worming and for mite control. We have discussed DE before on this site and you can search online for more information or go back to some earlier blogs regarding that product.
I had to agree to obtain bees this spring, take on a mentor, and give monthly reports for one year at the local JABA meetings, held the first Tuesday of each month. That is the partial running cost of the win. Not to mention I need to order my 3-lbs of bees plus a queen, then some other needed equipment and then I will be only feeding sugar and water to start till weather permits more blooms to arrive in the summer. Then other than weekly checks, they are and can basically take care a lot of themselves. Some maintenance and then yearly medications and you are good to go till fall honey harvest. I will have to add more "supers" later on as they build and add their need for more space for the hive brood and the honey they will make. I am thinking now of hot biscuits and lots of real butter and now...fresh, pure honey!
I will write more later on the subject of bees. If you remember I wrote last summer that I had not seen any bees really here all last year and I blamed my poor cucumber harvest on that fact. So hopefully this summer my home garden here at the urban farm will improve AND give up some good honey as well. So till later, I leave you today with our ongoing urban farming affirmation....and coming yet another step closer to our goal here: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"

WORKING ON COMMUNITY GARDEN SITE AS WE PREPARE FOR COOL WEATHER PLANTINGS

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm! So nice to be able to get online and actually have a good system to visit with you through. I finally got my old system...desktop, old printer, large monitor, many-many cords, etc. out of the way, cleaned off & cleaned up and FINALLY got my new WIFI system up and running. This includes a new wireless mouse for the laptop, a new WIRELESS PRINTER and got the wireless router installed. Your Garden Daddy finally came into the 21st century. With all that said I will move on into urban farm business.
I made a stop over at the Jackson Community Garden Site #4 this week, where I dropped off I think it was exactly 30 landscape timbers that I got from my big box job site for around $0.51 each that had been trimmed down due to being in the cull/cut lumber pile. I plan to use them as bed outline markers to make a neater edge in the garden and make the mulching on the bed perimeters easier as well. I am not making raised beds with these timbers but rather using for aesthetics mostly.
I may however as I can procure more of these timbers for some raised potato beds. Now do not think your Garden Daddy is getting away from his firm belief in row gardening but if you will bear with me I will share with you my thoughts on this process. I say "raised potato beds" loosely as I really should say more like a "potato tower"! Either plan a trench or square or triangle shaped bed. Work the dirt in the base of the tower to loosen soil, probably do this BEFORE placing your planting "box" in the area. Then push your potato eyes about 1/2" into the soil and cover with about 6" of wheat straw or other weed free hay. Keep wet - not flooded but moist. In about 2-weeks you should have some green shoots popping up and then cover these with more straw. Keep this up all season. About 2-weeks after the tops die off it is time to pull the straw back and reveal where your potatoes have grown up and out into the straw and harvest your bounty. You can even start earlier with this process, when the earth reaches around 50-degrees, and then replant in mid-summer for a later fall crop.
The urban chickens continue in their early molt. Or at least half of them are or so. They are really a messy sight now as many of them are bare on their backs and bums. I would be freezing if I was bare like that out in the cold weather we have had the past two months. But at least they will be back feathered in by the heat of summer I hope. My egg production is about 8-eggs a day from the 16 hens now. So at least I am getting enough to eat and still give some away.
I will leave you today now with our ongoing gardening affirmation in mind: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"

NEW COMPUTER ARRIVES AT GARDEN HOME

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm! It is nice today, nay...this very instant...to make this my very first thing I am doing on my new HP laptop. WHEW...I have waited patiently with frustration and ill will for my old desktop that had more issues than I care to relate at this writing. But I wanted to just mention, as this Garden Daddy promised to you all, that once I got the new unit I would be faithful in my writing again to you but still give me a few days to get used to everything. I was looking for the 10-key pad as I am in such a habit of using it, almost by touch, and this smaller keyboard will take some effort to re-adjust!
Allow me a day or two for some relearning and then this Garden Daddy will be at your service again. So I leave you this day with our ongoing affirmation in mind: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"

MASTER GARDENER GRADUATION BEHIND ME NOW AND ANOTHER WEEK OF DEEP WINTER SNOW

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm. I would like to share the photos that were in the local paper, The Jackson Sun, from our Master Gardener graduation last Thursday evening, Feb. 03, 2011. My graduation group is in the lower picture with me in the back-left in the cream colored sweater (I look and felt like a stuffed baked potato!) and in the top picture is my group of volunteer who logged in at least 100 or more hours this past year to commemorate the University of Tennessee and the activities of the UT Ag Extension Service being in existence and active. I was named as "leading the pack", having logged in about 158 hours of volunteer service this past year. To those of you who are dedicated followers of this Garden Daddy know where that time was spent...that work of love and effort...the Jackson Community Garden Site #4! I am sure time will be well spent there again this season, starting I hope during the end of this month of February 2011.

I would like to share with you the events of today and that we got somewhere over 3 or 4 inches of heavy, wet snow today. I went to my job this morning early as usual on Monday with rain starting around 4:00am. By 9:00am when I left for the day, it was in a driving, blinding snow storm with heavy winds driving the snow so hard I almost could not see the road in front of me. I hope this weather sees some break in the next week or so and I can get back outside very soon. I am chomping at the bit to get out and do something. I have been in all I can stand. Of course I am out every day with the chickens, which remain constant in their 7 to 12 eggs a day from the remaining 16-hens. I will call them hens now even though they are not OFFICIALLY hens till they are a full 1-year old. I am making some plans, if they finish their molt in time for our first poultry club swap and meet to look decent to sell all the Black Austraulorps, the Buff Orph, the Silver Laced Wyandottes and maybe another or two in the plan to exchange for some new chicks of the Welsummer breed and maybe another Ameraucana or two. The black birds have been good layers this winter but I am looking for the darkest egg layers I can get as well as the tinted green layers which have been VERY GOOD and CONSISTENT egg providers.

I leave you then today with our ongoing gardening affirmation in mind: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"

GARDEN DADDY PREPARES FOR FULL MASTER GARDENER CERTIFICATON GRADUATION

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm! One more week, next Thursday Feb. 03, 2011, will be our intern class graduation to full Master Gardener status. I am so excited to be included with my group of graduates this season. It has been over a year since the fall of 2009 when my intern class sat for our classroom studies and then over these past 17 months of volunteer work to complete our needed time and devotion to our chosen projects to get us to this point. Many of my class have logged over 100-plus hours of volunteer time during the 2010 service year. My work with the Jackson Community Garden project has afforded that opportunity to me as well. The work with JCG became more though than just another service project to log hours through. The JCG has given me the opportunity to work with a group of volunteers who for the love of gardening and the love of teaching others how to garden and a chance to serve my community. But in the most real way, I feel that the community garden project gives us in the Master Gardener group a chance to do what really embodies what our goal and pure essence of being a MG...in my own mind, it is that service & education through gardening that reflects the MG mission statement. I should have some photos of the graduation ceremony next week to share with you. To say excited is not even close. I am elated!
I continue to get eggs daily, anywhere from 7 or 8 to a full dozen. About half of the birds continue to be in molt, even in this frigid cold weather and with lots of snow and below average temps. I have received the chick order list from my favorite feed store and one of the owners, Ginger, at R & J Feed for this springs delivery. Temptation...temptation...temptation! The West TN Poultry Club I am associated with is having our first 2011 Chicken Swap in Millington, TN on March 5th at Tractor Supply and I am very tempted to move about 5 or so birds on down the road in a swap for outright sale. I am wanting to get some of the Welsummers birds one of our group has incubating even now. I would also like a few more of the Ameraucana pullets, the tinted egg layers. They have been the most consistent layers I have really had other than the Speckled Sussex, Silver Laced Wyandottes and the Barred Rocks. My problem is I want them all and even more. I have always enjoyed being around chickens and have longed for a while now for more room to have what I want.
I often think as you have heard me say in the past, how I would love to have about 5-acres to spread out on and really become more self sufficient and have more place to "play" with my critters, more garden space, etc. But in this economy I plan to just stay put for now and keep my little urban farm as it is.
I leave you this evening with our ongoing gardening affirmation in mind: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"

THEN THERE WERE 16...

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm! I would just like to relate to you that I have found one of my Black Austraulorp pullets STIFF AS A BOARD today and not from the cold either! I mean...T...I...M...B...E...R.........! I am down to 16-birds now. Between the gifting and the two natural deaths and the one I had to put down with the cross beak, I have reduced my own flock naturally really. That is not bad though that in about 10-plus months I have really only had two (2) fatalities. I think from all indications that both "natural deaths" were from being egg bound really. If not egg bound, as they really have not had those symptoms, I understand it could be that they had developed liver problems that lead to heart failure. With them being perfectly healthy, red combs, laying well, etc. one day and just stiff as a poker the next the heart attack sounds good to me. I know it is not worms, mites or other poultry issues and this sounds the most likely at this point.
So with 10-eggs delivered today and now down to 16 birds I leave you with our ongoing garden affirmation: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"

MID-WINTER GARDEN CHORES

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm. I would like to share with you in advance an article that is scheduled to appear in the February Madison County Master Gardener Newsletter in February 2011. I was asked to submit some ideas as often as possible to help out with some gaps there have been in trying to fill space. Who knows...this Garden Daddy may get a "URBAN FARM" corner in some publication sometime! For those of you who are wanting some winter gardening tips...here it is as submitted (how it gets published is another story):

MID-WINTER GARDEN CHORES

Welcome to the world of mid-winter gardening tips to get us ready for an early spring gardening session. These a few things we already know but can all use some reminders. January & February always seems to be so cold and very lack luster with the holidays just behind us and the pace has slowed down. That is true but not in the gardening world. There are many projects to occupy those days when it seems the sun will never shine again and the grass will never green back up
For those of us who have not cleaned off last summers' garden leftovers this can be the perfect time to clean off the now dried up debris and tidy up a bit. For those of us with compost bins, we have probably have already added most everything into that or otherwise discarded. No use waiting and thinking you have run out of time to clear off your vegetable garden site and now it is time to replant for this spring. Get it done now. Also in February, you can go ahead and add some lime to your gardening sites as in most forms we use it (either pelleted or ground) it takes some few months actually for it to break down for usable purposes. Actually liming could have been done this past fall and worked a few inches into the top of the soil.
February is also a good time for us to build or repair our cold frame & raised beds, order seeds, and get your lawn equipment serviced (most repair shops are a little slower this time of year and you can usually get in and out sooner than later with repairs & tuneups). It is time to prune some of your woody plants like grapevines, lilacs and fruit trees. You can paint your lawn furniture on warmer days, get your seed flats ready. One of our least favorite chores is tool sharpening. When doing this project yourself, remember to wear a good pair of leather palm gloves to protect your hands when using a file on hoes or mower blades, etc.
In February you can actually go ahead and start your cool season seeds in the prepared flats. These would include cabbages, broccoli, onions, etc. For the last week of February you can get your garden patch ready for some warmer weather veggies and cover with plastic or add to the cold frame. These would include carrots, lettuce, other leafy vegetables. I have even heard of some folks planting some potato "eyes" by the last week of February, planting around 8" deep, adding a layer of wheat straw UNDER the potato eyes, covering with the 8" of soil, then adding a heavy layer of wheat straw mulch on top of soil then adding another 1" of soil on top of the thicker wheat straw mulch and they were harvesting by the middle of the summer. Of course here in our often unpredictable Zone 7 in the mid-south we can have a good freeze late in the season. But with the 8" planting and heavy mulch on the potatoes you should just make it here. I might have to try this one in the near future myself.
So get out there, put on an extra layer of clothing and get some crisp, fresh, winter air and get a jump on things to come and let your garden shine and provide you with an early harvest that extends your growing season into almost a 9-month event with a spring, mid-summer and fall gardening session. And with any results at all, your freezer and pantry could be over run with good, healthy, home grown produce. In some cases I know of as well, some of our number have added a small backyard flock of laying hens, even in mid-town Jackson, where not only do we have our home gardens but where the eggs are fresh, non-medicated, steroid free and there is always LOTS of fertilizer mixed with straw, garden refuse and natural elements that can go back into the garden as well. I just threw that in for your thoughts on these long, gloomy winter days when our mind wanders through the seed catalogs and poultry supply catalogs and we place our orders from both! And as I say in my blog with our ongoing affirmation:"URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"

So to all you regular Garden Daddy followers I say happy winter gardening and keep up with your chores and keep your own URBAN FARM a star in your own neighborhood!