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December in Fallbrook
Coots on the pond 
Sunlight in the sleeping willows. 
Tranquility (try not to look at the houses). 
Tough and determined roots being fed by decaying golden leaves. 
An impromptu Christmas tree: a snag decorated with juniper, cranberries and bird seed. 
Lush green weeds keeping a low profile in the winter. 
Stately sycamores; their leaves shed to keep their roots warm. 
A season of greens, golds and blues. 
Coyote bush seed fluff glowing white instead of snow. You May Also Like
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Becoming Very Behind in my Cleaning
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- Chickens, Gardening adventures, Humor, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Planting Easter Dinner (in November)
Creepy white fingers I finally was able to work in the vegetable garden today; me and my helpers, that is.
Kakapo, Miss Amelia and Lark, helping I am by no means done, but I did some major cleaning out of old veggies. Out went the tomatoes that aren’t producing, dead squash vines, weeds, a volunteer avocado tree and the two enormous zucchini plants which, although having been cut in half, abused and ignored, have still been putting on a squash a week. I have one more zuke plant left, but these big guys had to go. The compost heap is… well… a big heap.
White potatoes in the closest bed, root veggies and brassica seeds in the back one As I study Permaculture, I’m more aware of the millions of microbes in the soil and the fine network of fungus that enriches plant roots. The less I disturb my garden soil, the better. After pulling the weeds, I sprinkled on GardenAlive’s soil enhancer, which are more microbes, as well as their organic Roots Alive fertilizer. I used a trowel to lightly work it all just under the soil surface, then topped it with compost from my compost bin. Having soil that is healthy, rich smelling and alive is any gardener’s dream. All those microbes free up nutrients in the soil so that your plants can suck them up and use them, which makes your veggies not only healthy and more resistant to bugs and diseases, but produce … um…. produce that is loaded with vitamins and minerals. Its like the old gardener’s joke: A gardener asks a man what he puts on his strawberries, and the man answers, “Cream.” The gardener shakes his head in disbelief and says, “I always put manure on mine.”
Potatoes from spring, which I’d stored in a dark cabinet under the house, decided they didn’t want to wait any longer.
Eager potatoes Fall is a good time to plant potatoes, as long as you keep their greenery protected from frost. Since potatoes can be grown from cuttings (as well as tubers and seeds), and to produce more potatoes you slowly mound up compost or straw around the stem as it grows, I tried something with these long white fingers. I lay each potato on the soil, with the long white stem laying flat, and covered them all up with light mushroom compost.
Laying down the potato stems to form new plants I’m betting that the stems will all take root and send up greenery along the nodes, using phototropism. That will multiply the number of potato plants by a lot. Then as the greenery grows, I’ll add more straw and compost around them. If all works out, sometime early next year I should be Potato Queen of Fallbrook! Of course, I had lots of help with the project.
Lots of helpers. I fenced off the beds after I planted A few months ago I planted pieces of yam that had started to grow in the house. The vines flourished outside of the bed. Now that I’ve cleared the massive zucchinis out of the way, I’ve pulled the vines back into the bed, layed them out so that they (mostly) touch the soil, and have dumped mushroom compost on parts of them. The object is to allow them to root along the vines and make more yams. I’ll let you know if this works or not.
Taming the yams I’m also planting carrots and parsnips. The ‘nips won’t be ready until next spring, having improved in flavor for any frost we may receive. I’m hoping there may be some small carrots ready for Christmas dinner, but I really should have put them in last month to be sure. In will go the brassicas: Brussels sprouts (did you ever wonder if it smells cabbagy in Brussels?), broccoli and cauliflower. These guys all like a good chill, as long as they are protected from frost. More cool-weather lettuces will go in, as well as lots of endive for my tortoise. Onion sets and seeds can go in, as well as radishes. The arugula has reseeded itself again and is coming up in all the pathways, with even an elegant specimen right next to the large pond by the rushes!
You remember the pond, which was put in to attract wildlife, right?
Wildlife gathers at the watering hole.... I still have tomatoes and eggplants producing. I tied up the lazy ferny stalks of my first-year asparagus to get them out of the way. The horseradish plant seems to be doing well; I have to consider what to serve it with at Christmas. My dad loved horseradish sauce, as do I, and I grow it as a memory of him and our Polish heritage on his side. I used to make him his favorite soup, borscht, but I would never taste it because I just don’t like beets.
Tomorrow, if I can move my joints after many days of weeding, I’ll clear out the remaining ’empty’ bed and cover the unused ones with compost and straw to sit until spring. I am so glad that I can garden almost year-round!
- Bees, Gardening adventures, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Vegetables
Nitrogen-Fixing Plants
Sweet pea If you’ve read my posts from this spring, you’ll have endured me going on and on about peas and beans and how they fix nitrogen in the soil. For those who nodded off during those episodes or who have just tuned in, I’ll go over it briefly.
Some plants have the ability to fix nitrogen in the soil. Actually, a type of bacteria called a rhizobia invades the roots of plants in the Fabacea family and a few others, and fixes atmospheric nitrogen in nodules on the plant’s roots. This is beneficial to both the plant and the bacteria, a process called mutulism. It also benefits whatever grows around the plants because, when the plant dies, the nodules release their nitrogen into the surrounding soil. In the case of long-lived shrubs and trees that fix nitrogen, as roots die off or are replaced, they release their nitrogen.
An edible forest garden is one where man mimicks the dynamics of an old-growth forest. Why? Because forests succeed without the aid of fertilizer, tilling, mulching, irrigation or any interference or ‘help’, as it were, from man. How does it do this? The plants that grow complement each other, providing what each other needs. These relationships are called plant guilds. You can create plant guilds, substituting plants that provide food for humans. In a guild there is a taller tree which provides shade and leaf droppings (mulch), shrubs which provide more shade, mulch and habitat for animals and insects, plants that fix nitrogen in the soil, plants that have long tap roots called ‘miner’ plants, because they take up nutrients from deep in the soil and deposit them on the soil surface when their leaves die off, plants that attract pollinators, and plants that are ground covers to regulate heat and moisture. Using permaculture practices for water harvesting and organic gardening, when the guild matures it should be almost completely self-sustaining.
Say you want to plant an apple tree. That would be your tall canopy tree for the guild, which drops leaves as mulch. Beneath it, you could plant a shrubby herb such as rosemary (another edible), daikon radishes (miners, leaving the cut leaves on the surface after harvesting the edible root), bush beans (legumes) and herbs such as dill, parsley and basil, some of which you allow to flower for pollinators. As the tree grows, the plant guild can widen and others planted.
Beans There are many plants, trees and shrubs that fix nitrogen in the soil. All beans and peas including soybeans and fava beans do; when the plants are finished cut them above the soil so the roots stay put and decay where they are to release the nitrogen. Cover crops such as clover and hairy vetch are grown and turned under to improve the nitrogen in the soil. If you are from the Southern California area, perhaps you’d be interested in knowing what native plants are nitrogen fixers.
Ceanothus (California Lilac) at Elfin Forest The native Southern California nitrogen fixers include: ceanothus, lupine, deerweed, California peashrub (endangered) (lotus), and redbud. Non-natives that are commonly used are alders, acacias, calliandra, sweet peas, guaja, and many more, as the Fabacea family is very large. Use any of the natives in ornamental gardens and not only will you be improving the soil and the vigor of the surrounding plants, but providing much needed habitat for our native birds and insects.
Try building plant guilds; it is challenging and fun. Many combinations of plants are suggested on permaculture
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Stuck Rat
I wasn't sure what I was seeing from the kitchen. Tree rats are part of life in a rural area. They have cost me hundreds of dollars in damage to my cars, since they love eating the tubing and enjoy the warmth inside for nesting. However they have their place… just not in my stuff. So when I looked out the window this morning while eating breakfast and saw a very un-birdlike creature in the hanging bird feeder, I had to go outside and see if it really was what I thought it was. Already the temperature was over 90 degrees in this heat wave, and it was only about 8 am.
Wood rats are one of three types found in San Diego County Rats don’t like the sun, being nocturnal, and the way this youngster was just hanging over the edge made me think he was ill. Then I thought that he looked as if he was stuck. I took a shovel and put the end up under his head, and he stirred, then gracefully stepped down on it and jumped off into the columbine. I think he was just a kid who had a bad case of the Where Am I?’s. I told him not to go into my cars. He did pose in a very picture-book fashion, becoming the most adorable rat I’ve ever seen.
A long way down for a young animal. You May Also Like
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- Bees, Birding, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos
Bouquets for Birds and Butterflies
Lilliput zinnia At the beginning of this summer, the new subterranean drip irrigation system was installed on my property. It features tubing with holes at either twelve or twenty-four inches apart. When it runs (from my well) it leaves circles of dampness polka-dotting the soil surface. I had purchased two packets of wildflower seed, one with a selection of plants to attract bees, and the other for butterflies. Mixing them together, I figured that they wouldn’t fare well scattered, at least this year. My daughter and I pressed seed into many of the wet spots and hoped the rabbits wouldn’t notice.
What happened was a delightful surprise, as only a garden can provide. In many locations around the yard grew mixed bouquets of wildflowers.
Mexican sunflower, cosmos, nasturtiums, zinnias, surround a white calla lily If we had separated selected seed and planned the planting, nothing so beautiful would have come of it. Although many species either didn’t emerge or were eaten, the most common survivors were zinnias, cosmos and borage.
Cosmos, borage, zinnias and alyssum. I was amazed and thrilled; I had purchased a borage plant and then fed it to the rabbits (at least, that is what they thought). Here now are borage plants all over the yard, their royal blue, cucumber-flavored flowers dipping modestly behind the flaunting cosmos.
Sweet basil, cilantro, dill and zinnias In fact, I now have several very hearty sweet basil plants that put the carefully cultivated plants in my raised veggie beds to shame. There is also dill and cilantro growing well even this late in the season.
Cosmos, sweet basil, zinnias, borage, camellia balsam, alyssum There are some plants in the bouquets that haven’t reached maturity yet, so there may still be some surprises. The only flower that emerged that I didn’t recognize and had to look up was camellia balsam (Impatiens balsamina). Two stalks of it, one pink and one red, give these ‘arrangements’ a vertical line.
Camellia balsam (Impatiens balsamina) Although not all of these wildflowers are native to San Diego, or even California, they provide food for birds, bees and are host plants for butterflies, providing the caterpillars food, a place to form their chrysalises, and nectar for the mature butterfly. Bees like small flowers with little drops of nectar too small to drown in, with a nice landing pad of a petal close by. Everything in the carrot family works well. Here are some suggested flowers to plant:
For butterflies:
Mexican lupine, Mexican sunflower, borage, calendula, camellia balsam, scabiosa, cornflower, milkweed, parsley, crimson clover, aster, coreopsis, cosmos, prairie gayfeather, purple coneflower, sweet sultan, sneezeweed, sweet William, bishops flower, black-eyed Susan, dill, snapdragon, yarrow, bergamot, cleome, verbena, and butterfly bush.
For bees:
Cosmos, sunflowers, borage, coriander, Siberian wallflower, dill, coreopsis, poppies, gaillardia, zinnia, sweet basil, purple prairie clover, globe gillia, catnip, lemon mint, black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, lavender hyssop, bergamot, yarrow, mint, California buckwheat.
Be sure to plant flowers that bees love away from paths and walkways if you or your family want to avoid contact with the bees.
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- Animals, Bees, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Vegetables
What Bugs See
To veer off from the vacation photos, I thought I’d talk about bugs! I’ve been working in the garden a lot and watching the myriad types of insects drawn to the various flowers blooming all over, and it reminded me of something amazing that I learned last year. The way flowers look to us is not what most insects and birds see. The flowers are bright and showy, but they offer up visual clues to pollinators through colors and patterns that can only be seen with eyes that see UV light. Humans can’t. We can’t assign colors to UV light in the way that we understand them, so when photographing with UV light we substitute our colors to show the change in patterns. The markings on the flowers are guides to where the pollen is, like lights and painted lines on airport runways. Just as baby chicks’ mouths are large and brightly colored to show mom and dad where to put the worm, especially on the inside as they gape and wait to be fed, so have flowers made sure that the pollinators get to the right place for pollen! The differences between what we see and what insects see can be startling; there is a whole hidden world right before our eyes, just as there are supersonic and subsonic sounds that we cannot hear. Elephants make subsonic noises that other elephants can hear miles away, but we aren’t aware of it.
Below are photos taken with and without UV light by the brilliant Norwegian scientist-cameraman Bjorn Roslett. Remember that the UV colorization is man-made to show the difference in patterns. More technical information can be found at his site here: http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html , with lists of types of flowers and what approximate color changes there are under UV light.
Dandelion 
Vinca minor 
Vinca minor under UV 
Norsk mure (Potentilla norvegica) 
Norsk mure under UV 
Primrose 
Crocus 
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Of Monarchs and Milkweeds
Monarch (photo: Miranda Kennedy) The migration of the monarch butterfly covers an astounding 2500 miles. Instead of dying off in the cold of winter, these flimsy, light-as-air insects fly from parts of the US to groves of Oyamel fir trees in Mexico. They are the only insect to cover such territory. They are particular little beasties, for they rest only in the Oyamel firs and look for milkweed plants on which to lay their eggs. Milkweed exudes a sap toxic to animals which the Monarch caterpillars eat, obviously immune, making them toxic in turn. The caterpiller’s bright coloration is a warning.
Snazzy stripes mean 'eat at your own risk' (photo: M. Kennedy In fact, the Viceroy butterfly, which is very tasty to predators, mimics the Monarch’s coloration to keep from being dinner.
Deforestation, insects, climate change and pollution have cut a huge swath through the Oyamel fir tree population, and the Monarchs are struggling to survive. They also combat the decrease in milkweed as human populations spread and plant lawns instead of weeds and wildflowers.
At the beginning of this year, in my efforts to change my property into habitat, I was determined to help the Monarchs. Every year I see maybe one or two of the majestic butterfly pass through my yard, and I’ve been sorry that I can’t offer he or she anything except nectar.
What I had been calling milkweed actually is sow thistle Sonchus oleraceus, which is an edible kitchen herb brought over from Europe with the settlers as food. It also has a milky sap in it’s hollow stem, thus the erroneous name of milkweed. There are over 100 varieties of real milkweed. So, I purchased two Balloon Plants, or Asclepias physocarpa (Asclepias is the botanical name for the milkweed family). They grew quite well, developing the balloon-shaped seed pods which, when ripe, burst open spreading small seeds with feathery wings attached that carry them everywhere.
Seeds burst and fly To my great excitement my daughter spotted very tiny Monarch caterpillars on the leaves!
Tiny Monarch caterpillers (photo: M. Kennedy) The caterpillars have been eating voraciously and growing big and fat.
Monarch caterpiller and milkweed (Photo: M. Kennedy) We’ve seen Monarchs in the yard many more times than in the past. We are monitoring the caterpillars closely, waiting for them to metamorphosize. I’ll help the plants distribute seeds throughout my yard, and I’ll plant the native narrow-leafed milkweed as well. I’m so excited that within months this goal was achieved and that these wonderful creatures have one more place to find refuge.
Good links:Monarch Watch http://shop.monarchwatch.org/ , Monarch Migration http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/Migration.htm.
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Finches Eat Sunflower Leaves
Are your sunflowers being stripped? Are the leaves acquiring non-snail-like holes and then disappearing altogether? You may be feeding the birds, but not with the seeds!
Lesser goldfinches apparently are nuts over sunflower leaves. They will tear little bits of the leaves off and injest them, and within a day or so there will be nothing but a stem and a flower.
If your goal is to feed the birds, then this is okay. If you have bird problems on your vegetables such as peppers, then you may want to plant sunflowers off to the side to distract them.
Why do they eat sunflower leaves? They must like a little salad with their seeds, and sunflowers are particularly yummy for them. In searching the Internet for suggestions as to why they like sunflower leaves so much, there were many postings about the incidents, and yet most respondents insisted that the birds were after bugs on the leaves, or that snails came in the night and ate the leaves!
This occurrence seems to happen mostly in California, and other than bird nets (which one person said that the lesser goldfinches chewed through!) or planting sunflowers thickly (one for them, one for you), you may as well just enjoy the show. Ours come up from dropped or buried birdseed, and when the plants are growing their flowers, suddenly they are beset by birds who skeletonize the plant. We’re okay with that; it saves a little cost on the very expensive Niger thistle seed! (Oh, and by the way, Niger thistle isn’t thistle seed at all).
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Dedicated to Evelyn
Almost time.... We’ve gathered seven eggs from the girls this week. We believe the first one was Evelyn’s, the beautiful blond Buff Orpington. The next ones are Miss Amelia’s, followed by a blue/green one from Chickpea and unbelievably, a brownish one from our other Americauna, Kakapo.
First three beautiful eggs, L-R Evelyn's, Miss Amelia's and Chickpea's The two Barred Rocks are too young yet to lay, but they certainly are interested in what is suddenly so popular about the nesting boxes.
The Barred Rocks are curious teenagers The nesting platform in the chicken tractor isn’t deep enough to keep straw from being kicked off, so I’ve put up three bee ‘supers’, which are four sides and no top or bottom. Until something else can be arranged, they do just fine.
Miss Amelia, tail up and ready to get it over Watching the girls as they become hens has been interesting. Miss Amelia sat in the nesting box and panted.
As a mom, I know how she's feeling. She allows me to pet her now, as she squats into the mating pose. It is a little disturbing, and doubtlessly frustrating for both her and Emerson who is caged separately.
Miss Amelia is desperate for... attention. Sorry! Chickpea, the big girl, jumps from box to box annoying everyone trying to nest in there. She kicks as much bedding out as she can, sending it flying across the coop with her big feet. When she’s ready to lay she goes into a chicken trance. You can wave your hand in front of her eyes and there is no response, just some panting. Then, voila! A beautiful greenish egg.
Chickpea in a trance Kakapo is the nest builder. She’ll squat down in one of the boxes then lean her head far out of it, almost losing her balance, to grab a wisp of straw to throw over her shoulder into the box.
We hadn’t seen Evelyn lay, but assumed the first egg which was pointier than Miss Amelia’s, was hers. She’d been in a mood for several days and had settled down. Yesterday, though, she sat down in the corner of the pen by her beau Emerson and took a nap in the daytime which was uncharacteristic. She appeared perfectly healthy; in fact, I commented on how red and full her wattles were. This morning we found our dear Evelyn dead on the floor in the corner of the coop. We also found two eggs with transparent shells in the lay box. There was no evidence of what made her die, but I’m guessing it had something to do with the egg-laying. We don’t know who laid the shell-less eggs, but that shouldn’t kill anyone. It is remedied with more calcium in their diets on top of their lay pellets. Perhaps she was egg-bound, or just couldn’t handle the eggs. We were horrified and greatly saddened. I buried Evelyn under the lime tree just behind the coop. Now we have five hens and a rooster. We gave the girls crushed egg shells and kale leaves, and I’ll sprinkle calcium on their food tomorrow. We’ll miss the beautiful Evelyn something terrible.
Evelyn looking great. No signs of illness. You May Also Like
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