CHICKEN BREEDS COMING TO THIS URBAN FARM

HELLO and welcome to Garden Daddy here at the Urban Farm! I thought I would share with you some of my research and in depth study I have done in preparation for the selecting the six (6) breeds of chickens I am adding to this endeavor of the urban farm and become more self sufficient and self reliant. I did not say "economical" necessarily as I doubt the COST vs EGG PRODUCTION will ever balance or come even, maybe way down the road but the added benefits of self sufficiency and knowing what you are eating is the REAL PAYOFF!

When looking into keeping backyard chickens in an urban setting, I was looking for calm, easy going, friendly, non-skittish and good winter layers/good layers all around and the main criteria I wanted was an ALL BROWN EGG FLOCK. So the hunt was really intense, reading everything I could on the different birds, asking some fellow Master Gardener Interns I was in class with that have flocks and just really burning up the internet search.

I would like to introduce you to some of the "girls" I will be getting. Here is a Barred Plymouth Rock or more commonly called just Barred Rock. These are layers of large brown eggs, good winter layers, large full bodies and very calm & docile hens, often topping out at maturity often at around 7+ lbs. and I present it here below.

Now here is another choice I have made. This is the Black Australorp. They mature early and often laying between 5-6 months. They top out as well around 7lbs., lay large brown eggs and in unlighted conditions in winter have even been known in barnyard testing to lay 364 eggs in 365 days. Bred in Australia in the early 1900's it was introduced in the USA around 1920. Bred for large, prolific egg producers without sacrificing the meat utility as well, these lovely black ladies have a green to purple-black sheen in sunlight and they show well at most county fairs.

Third on Garden Daddy's list for this urban farm is the Silver Laced Wyandotte. I think this hen is one of the prettiest around. It has been one of the best American bred varieties that has been around for some time now. Good sized eggs from light to rich brown, these as well are great winter layers due to their small, rose comb that is not affected by cold weather. In case you are not aware of it, the larger a hen's comb is, the less of a winter layer she is and any hen that has a colored ear is a brown egg layer. This variety is very much a show or exhibition bird and maybe this Garden Daddy will have a fall fair entry if these look half way decent! Look below for this wonderful bird.

Fourth on this urban farm list of chickens is the Buff Orphington. Breed history says to "take out your gold pocket watch and that is the true color of the Buff Orphington". Introduced here from England in the late 1800's, these are large, stately birds with a very quiet disposition. Again a brown egg machine through winter as well, these "Golden Girls", with their heavy, full plumage are a barnyard favorite and "shell" out eggs for years and definitely are worth their weight in "gold"! Here are these beauties below.

Fifth and next to last on the list of what this Garden Daddy is adding to this urban farm garden is the Delaware. This mostly white bird with barring on the tail and in the hackle, will be another lovely addition to this flock. This breed was founded in the state of Delaware of course, from crossing a Barred Rock with a New Hampshire cross. A heavy breed of bird which lays a nice large to JUMBO brown egg, the hens will reach about 6lbs. and are considered a nice "stewing" bird when their time in the nest is done, about 4-years for most all chickens. Enjoy the pic below and think of those double yolk eggs going into your next cake mix!

Last on this Garden Daddy's list is the one I have always wanted for most of my adult life since thinking about raising chickens. Welcome to the world of the Ameraucanas. This great bird lays "tinted" or pastel eggs, due to the crosses made with the jungle type of foul from the Auracana Indians in South America. Often mistakenly called "Easter Eggers" and different from the Auracana chickens that have no tail due to not having the last few vertebrae in the spine, these lighter weight wonders are mostly just for fun and possible exhibition later on as well. Not prolific but efficient layers, these birds have "beards" or "muffs" around/under their neck and often ear tuffs that are a throw back to the jungle birds. These are calm, friendly and curious but can be picky about their nest box. I am looking forward to this addition to the flock as you can see below! This is a "buff" colored one but the range of color is amazing and often very vivid as well.

(For the record, NONE of these photos are from this urban farm, but from public sites or hatcheries for public use. I make no claim to these photos.)

Garden Daddy hopes you find this both informative and as much fun as I do when I actually get my little birds. I am working on the brooder today and should have it finished in the morning. I will post something about it then. For now I leave you with thoughts of lots of egg salad sandwiches, bright yolks of fun (deep, rich ones I hope) and thoughts of some good fertilizer for this urban farm garden site(s). I give you over to our ongoing daily gardening affirmation: "GARDENING: ONE YARD AT A TIME!"

NEW NAME + DIRECTION FOR THIS GARDEN HOME!

WELCOME BACK to your Garden Daddy here at the garden home! I am doing much investigating and research and I am almost there today. I am RENAMING this "garden home" the "URBAN FARM" if my plan goes into place this week. I am checking with the city as we speak with emails and calls waiting to be returned to me about the zoning codes for keeping "city chickens" here at the garden home! I know that Tennessee cities, like Nashville & Knoxville, have already addressed this issue and it works well. You have to give proper reasoning for noise, smell and cleanliness.

I started this early this morning before I went to work and since I have gotten home I have the answer that there is NO CODE regarding chickens in general, but again as I mentioned earlier above about smell, noise & sanitation! So it appears that this Garden Daddy and the newly inspired "URBAN FARM" are on our way to getting our brood. This will make this city farm all the more of a teaching opportunity in the future for my plans with the Madison County Master Gardener program and future interns as well as my own personal use and pleasure of knowing the best possible effort is going into not only my eggs but to future "harvesting" of older birds as needed.

This new addition will add a new dimension to our times together and give another outlet for those summer vegetables that are not worth saving for harvest or busted squash and tomatoes and even a place that will get use from fruit rinds such as watermelon and cantaloupe as well as kitchen discards and also the addition of some few fresh grass clipping from time to time. I will share with you in the stages of building my coop and run from my well researched and thoroughly planned out ideas. AND HERE IT GOES

This is the "coop" in little puzzle pieces for now and then you see the "coop home site" I have written to you over the past two days and it started early Monday morning about 3:00am and it is now Tuesday mid-morning. I just got my email confirmation on my chick request and it has been processed by my local feed store, R & J Feed, that is getting in the shipments. I will have three delivery dates I can go pick up my pullet chicks. The first batch will be here on April 7th, 2nd on April 14 and lastly on April 28th. That will give this urban farm the compliment of 14 hens I am looking for. I will share with you in a future posting the 6-breeds I am acquiring and hope you will enjoy their color and variety as much as I think I will. This will be the "end in sight" of what I have wanted to do for many years and finally making it come true! This spring is especially exciting with the addition of this flock of "layers in training" and hopefully in about 16-20 weeks I will have my first egg if all goes well and things play out like they should!

I must leave today to go try to round up some donations for the Jackson Community Gardens project I am working with now and we are looking for lumber, supplies, MONEY....anything that will help the project get "planted" this year so to speak. By the way, I have designed a GARDEN DADDY tee shirt and could be taking orders soon. I need to order about 20 per order and they run about $18.00/per shirt - cost. Let me know if any followers or readers would be interested in putting together an order and I will see if we can get you into becoming a "walking billboard" for your Garden Daddy! I will send you on your gardening way with our ongoing gardening affirmation: "GARDENING: ONE YARD AT A TIME!"

GARDEN DADDY GIVES YOU HIS "FAV-5" VEGGIES FOR THE BACKYARD GARDEN

HELLO from your Garden Daddy here in the garden home! I thought I would give you this Garden Daddy's best of MY best for your backyard vegetable patch. Most all these you know as regular garden staples and you already eat probably now anyway, but I am working on my "FAV-5's" in all categories for your own home gardening pleasure.
*Tomato: JET STAR, BETTER BOY, CELEBRITY & RUTGERS.
(I plant a variety - last summer I had 37-plants, produced over 1200 fruit and was eating tomatoes BEFORE July 4Th!)
*Purple Hull Peas
*Eggplant
*Yellow Summer (crook neck) Squash
*Peppers: "Big Bertha" (Bell), Hungarian Yellow Sweet (Banana), Gypsy (Banana)
In coming sessions I will discuss and give you my "FAV-5's" of herbs and beyond...shrubs, flowers, perennials, etc. I hope this helps guide you somehow. I have included above the things I always have in my vegetable patch. I know this is not very much but this is a basic, all around grouping in that with small spaces and sometimes even using large pots sitting on my deck on the back of the house or even set around at the front of the garden one can get some sense of variety of flavors, groups of veggies and I really grew enough last year I had a good bit I put in my freezer from tomato soup mix (some pre-seasoned for spaghetti sauce and some not seasoned) to slicing my squash and laying it on a cookie sheet in the freezer till solid then "zip-lock" them into freezer bags and even tried to dry some herbs.
I will leave you now as the rain has headed out of hear last night and clear, warm & sunny skies have set in today and the garden home is crying for attention from its' Garden Daddy! I will leave you today with our ongoing gardening affirmation: "GARDENING: ONE YARD AT A TIME!"

JUST LOOK AT THIS JACKSON ENERGY AUTHORITY COMPOSTED "HUMANURE"

HELLO from your Garden Daddy here at the Garden Home! WHEW...What a busy week I had last week, what with doing a lot of "volunteer gardening", taking some neighbors to my "big box store" to get some good hardwood mulch we had on sale, planting trees at a neighborhood school, prepping my own vegetable garden and then I got myself 2-truckloads of THIS:

This was added to the veggie patch and my "finished side" of my compost bin. Just take a look at this wonderful product we have available here in Jackson through our sewage/water treatment plant! I have spoken repeatedly on this site about the great advantage and cheap price of this material. The cost is only $15.00/1-scoop (truck load) for the mulch and $20.00 for the leaf compost. It is the leaves, sticks, branches and other refuse that is picked up on the streets of my town, mixed with pasteurized and processed material from the sewage treatment plant, then it is mixed with a little sawdust I understand and then heated and conditioned then sold the following season as what you see here. These two loads are of the "leaf compost MULCH...there is also regular COMPOST, that product is a little different in that it is primarily leaf product mixed with sawdust, sand the "humanure" product then processed a little further than the regular mulch is from what I understand. I think I need to do an interview with someone out at the sewage treatment plant and get an actual fact sheet on this process for you and then you will not be so sceptical about this process and product and not worry about thinking your Garden Daddy has flipped what few hairs left on his head and using a product that might not be safe for human consumption. I guarantee you this is a SAFE product I know as I asked that over and over out there.

Anyway...the vegetable garden has been set in motion and I even planted 4-tomato plants and put heavy pine straw mulch around the roots and then "tented" the top with heavy plastic sheeting to make like a little greenhouse or hoop house type of situation inside. Even with heavy rain yesterday and cold last night, low this morning about 36-degrees, and even some snow early this morning before daylight while I was at work at 4:00 a.m., today these little things are looking real good today as you can see. I only put in 4 plants so far as I usually use several different varieties every year and this is the only variety I found available this past week that were already started plants.

You can see below that the veggie patch is sitting pretty now, pretty little "soldier-like rows", just waiting patiently for the seeds and plants to go in. I saved all my pine straw from my 6 very large pine trees in the back yard and you can see here I use it as mulch BETWEEN the rows. This not only acts as a marvelous weed deterrent but it serves as a good place to kneel and work the rows when needed and stay somewhat MUD-FREE even in the worst conditions like today. I already had composted all winter on the vegetable garden area with the last few grass clippings, leaves from the yard and all this pine straw, but I added 1-full truck load of the JEA compost mulch, some 13-13-13 fertilizer, some lime (for calcium, as this helps prevent blossom end rot on tomatoes and some other vegetables) and a large amount of ash I saved from my chimmenea from burning sticks, etc. all winter on my back deck. This was all worked in with a hoe and then made into rows as you see here and then the pine straw I moved off the top before making the rows was added back between rows for a nice clean look and useful as well again - for weed prevention. This mulching aids in moisture retention as well during those drought days of July and August!

The vegetable patch is really a little bigger than it appears but could not get it all into the frame. Also, I always put my cucumbers on the outside of that back chain link fence and have them grow up it into more "vertical gardening" to save room from the roaming vines but to keep them clean and off the ground and out of mud, etc. And the summer squash (yellow crook neck) goes to the side of this bed on the other outside of the drive I share with my neighbor. The did very well last year as you can see from some archived pics here in this site.

I did want to give you a small tutorial on commercial fertilizers: "All fertilizers have three numbers on the label which indicate the fertilizer analysis, or "percentage by weight" of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, in that order."

I have rambled enough on this dreary, rainy and cold day here in the last full week of March 2010 and I leave you today with these thoughts and great gardening anticipation from your Garden Daddy: "I think that no matter how old or tired or worn out I feel, I cannot imagine a spring when I will not plant something, hoping for a bloom, petal or leaf to bring my smiling heart into deep summer blush!"...Garden Daddy

GARDEN DADDY PLANTS TREES AT LOCAL SCHOOL FOR CURB APPEAL

HELLO from your Garden Daddy here at the garden home! I thought I would share with you the idea to get you day-to-day gardeners as well as you "weekend yard warriors" out there and working in your community. My neighborhood area school and my place of voting has often been a neglected (curb appeal that is) site really ever since it was built and some local neighborhood association friends asked this Garden Daddy if I would help plant some dogwood trees at this school and last Thursday we did just that...17-trees planted & mulched and then some trees that were planted last year got new mulch as well. JEA mulch that is...the "humanure" kind!

So you folks get out to your schools and help them out and take a flat or two of flowers and some good friends with you and make your local, neighborhood school shine and be the pride of your community!

And as always, remember your daily Garden Daddy affirmation: "GARDENING: ONE YARD AT A TIME!"

GARDEN DADDY TAKES ON NEW COMMUNITY PROJECT

HELLO from your Garden Daddy here at the garden home! Well, today, Wednesday, 03/17/10, I attended a meeting in downtown Jackson, TN. at the First United Methodist Church (FUMC) regarding the Jackson Community Gardens. Remember, I placed it on this site a few days ago on a side bar highlight. I went in to actually sign up to get my name on the list for a 10ft x 25ft plot and ended up becoming a Lot Coordinator for an entire garden site. Evidently there is a new site opening up this spring but they were in need of a coordinator and I don't know why I raised my hand! But for serious this is a wonderful opportunity to not only get my volunteer hours in for my Master Gardener intern hours but one of the best ways to serve my community and my LANA neighborhood as the garden site is in my neighborhood community as well. I think this will give me insight into putting my life long love of gardening to good use, put my feeble talents and newly learned MG intern knowledge to use but will help me develop my gardening leadership talents in order to work better with the MG's.http://www.jacksonfumc.org/how-to-serve/communitygardens.php

I drove past the lot on my way home from the meeting and viewed the potential site. It was not used last year and needs much work but with a little back bending and much help from the City of Jackson, JEA (Jackson Energy Authority & their composting material), other lot coordinators and the community that intends to use the sub-divided gardening plots I know it will be a big success. And I know that if the stars align just right and things work out well and I am able to continue this project for future years, next year and the one there after will only be better and better. The more the property gets worked and cared for and tended the more weed free and better the soil will become as well as the better gardeners we will have in this program.

Thursday, 03/18/2010, I took some photos I will share below of the JCG site I will working on. It is really raw just now and used to have some kind of home on it but the neighborhood it is located in and the cross streets are in need of some vitality and a little love and care and just general maintenance.

As you can see from these shots the property is pretty well a clean slate and so it will take some time and effort to get this into shape for any kind of gardening plots. But with some hard work and the process as it stands now it should be ready possibly by the middle of May for a late summer garden site. Then next year it should be much easier.

This afternoon I also spent about 2-hours over at Tigrett Middle School helping another LANA volunteer, C.C., plant 17-trees over there on that property. Tigrett is probably the school in Jackson that has the least "curb appeal". So after getting some JEA compost/mulch and picking up C.C., we headed over to the school property, shovels, gloves and buckets in hand and did our chore there. When dropping my work partner off at her home close to my house, she and I walked her lovely garden and she offered me a few plants from her collection, which of course I gladly accepted. You know how your Garden Daddy loves to collect plants he does not have, especially perennials that will return year after year!

So I leave you this day, this wonderful, sunny spring day, with our ongoing gardening affirmation: "GARDENING: ONE YARD AT A TIME!"

VEGETABLE GARDEN GOES FROM CHAOS TO ORDER

HELLO again from your Garden Daddy here at the garden home! Today, even though very cloudy, cool & only 50-degrees I spent most of the day in the yard, basically in the veggie patch. I moved some top dressing of dry pine straw around and then used a small electric tiller and dug up my rows in preparation to plant around April 14th or so. I worked the soil very well and a lot of my decomposed material I had on the area had done just that and it was worked into the soil and turned under. I will then add some 10-10-10 or 13-13-13 fertilizer tomorrow and a little more "lime" (calcium) to help keep some blossom end rot from coming on the veggies, namely the tomatoes. It is very exciting for me today to see my paper plan becoming reality and knowing that soon-very soon I will have plants and seeds going in and then I will pull the removed straw and extra decomposing material back up around the new plants and let nature do what it does best...return the dead, decaying material back into rich, black, wonderful and very worthwhile soil! You can see in this photo below how rich my soil is already after this past year of adding my yard material, leaves, grass clippings and pine needles

I got 4-rows worked up today and the result is wonderful in my minds' eye. I am truly excited if I have not already mentioned it but the fact that soon there will be produce in "them thar' rows" makes today's work and strain worth all the effort. Tomato plants will go around the perimeter, tying them to the fence for support and then the rows will contain my beans, eggplant, peppers and some yellow squash. Last year, I planted my yellow squash on the outside of the chain link fence that is on the side of this bed in the photo below. But this year I will plant them in the main garden and then I am planting zucchini where the yellow squash was. Also in this photo you see the back of the yard at the alley and the back fence of my yard. I have and will continue to plant my cucumbers on the outside of that fence and train them up the fence and that keeps them clean and off the ground and easy to pick and shaded from heat by their own leaves.

I will leave you today with good wishes and these gardening affirmations in mind: "Know when you plant your seeds, whether they be in your home garden or life's garden, your harvests will surprise you with blooms and arm fulls of love!"...Garden Daddy