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Our Newest Additions

First time in the water under mama's watchful eye.

Our brown Muscovy duck brought her babies out of the nest today. There are 27 little balls of fluff!

Anecdotal evidence and our experience indicate that Muscovies are usually better mothers than other ducks. Many say it's best to keep the drakes separate from the ducklings because they may sometimes unintentionally trample ducklings. Be that as it may, our Muscovy drake, Socks, is a great dad.

This brood, however, has been adopted by our Pilgrim gander Westley. His mate, Buttercup, died last year, so he has been rather lonely this spring. Westley has been nervously standing guard over this brood all morning. Poor guy, we need to find him another Buttercup.

Westley helping with the chores --
 "As you wish."

We supplement our ducklings with a chick starter After a few weeks, the ducklings can be switched to a chicken grower feed, although ours will have access to all the tender grass and weeds they want. At about 4 months they'll be ready to harvest, especially if we supplement with a grower feed.

Muscovies are excellent livestock for backyard homesteading, mini-farming purposes.

Buttercup, a Pilgrim goose

While they are often referred to as a duck, they aren't related to the Mallard like the other domestic duck breeds. They have some characteristics of ducks, but are also similar to geese. They don't take to deep water like ducks, though they enjoy having plenty of water to wash in. Like other waterfowl they need water deep enough to submerge their nostrils and eyes to keep them clean. Like ducks, they like to mix their food with water--what a mess in the brooder pens. Muscovies are South American birds that like to roost in trees at night, and have fairly sharp claws that enable them to do so. They're not strong flyers, but they have no trouble clearing our five- and six-foot fences, if we don't remove the flight feathers from one wing.

One thing is for certain, Muscovies are much quieter than either our ducks or our geese. In fact they make no sound except for a rare, short "peep" and a warning "hiss." This is a good animal to have in a close neighborhood. Muscovy drakes weigh up to about 15 pounds and ducks weigh about half of that. They come in a variety of colors, and in our experience color of the offspring is not dependent on the color of the parents.

Muscovies have less fat than Mallard-type ducks. The breast on a Muscovy is large and almost fat-free. We think it tastes very much like beef. In fact, cooked properly and served with a little horseradish sauce, it is reminiscent of prime rib. The darker meat of the Muscovy tastes more like chicken. (Doesn't everything taste more or less like chicken?)

April Garden Tasks

• Give flowers and vegetables a foliar feeding of liquid seaweed or compost tea; spray the liquid nutrients on foliage early in the day before it gets too hot.
• Plant black-eyed, purple hull and crowder peas, okra, peanuts, sweet potatoes, squash, melons, cucumbers, and corn—all can withstand the heat that will arrive in less than 2 months.
• Keep planting basil—it loves the warm weather.
• Keep adding kitchen scraps and grass clippings to your compost pile.
• Replenish your mulch!
• If slugs and snails are decimating your plants, collect them in the evening, when you're most likely to spot them.
• Plant pumpkins, summer squash, melons, and other vegetables that thrive in heat.
• Every 2 weeks from now until late summer, plant small blocks of bush beans and sweet corn to extend the harvest until frost.
• Thin fruits on fruit trees to increase their size and keep branches from breaking.
• Sow seeds of nasturtiums, marigolds, portulaca, amaranthus, salvias, vinca (Catharanthus roseus), sunflowers, and zinnias.
• Attract beneficial insects to your garden: provide them with their chosen  foods and habitats. Umbelliferae family members such as anise, carrot, caraway, coriander, dill, fennel and parsley, with many tiny flowers arranged in tight umbels, and those in the Asteraceae (Compositae) family, such as black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, and strawflower, with a central disc flowers surrounded by many ray petals, attract many beneficials. Mustard flowers attract lacewings that control aphids and parasitic wasps that keep down cabbage caterpillars and coddling moths.

Fertilizer Facts

 In our Southern California gardens, March is a great time to fertilize. Plants that are beginning to grow can really use the boost in nutrients: Lawns turn greener. Flowers almost immediately bloom. Veggies grow quickly. Fruit trees set more fruit. Citrus green up and look happy.

To many, especially to those new to gardening, figuring out fertilizers can be a challenge. There are so many different kinds on the market: General purpose, multipurpose,  specialty fertilizers for lawns, shrubs, flowers, for citrus, acid-loving plants, tomatoes, azaleas, and so on--add to this the choices of slow-release, quick release, organic, non-organic, granules, liquids, soluble powders, spikes, stakes, beads, gels, concentrates...yikes! So many choices. We just want to fertilize our plants.

By law, the fertilizer label must show the percentage of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P; phosphoric acid), and potassium (K; potash). These percentages are listed in order (N-P-K) on the label in large numbers, such as 10-10-10, or 12-4-2. So a 5 pound bag of a leading brand's 24-8-16 fertilizer will deliver 1.2 pounds of nitrogen (24% of 5), 0.4 pounds of phosphorus (8% of 5), and 0.8 pounds of potassium to your garden soil. So that's 2.5 pounds of N, P, and K -- what is the rest of the stuff in the bag? Basically, it is filler, so figure the cost per pound of nitrogen when choosing your store-bought fertilizer.  For example, suppose five pounds of 10-10-10 bag and a 12-4-2 fertilizer costs the same. The 12-4-2 is a better buy, especially if you are adding the fertilizer to the surface of your garden soil (more on this below).

There is persistent garden folklore that says that nitrogen encourages green growth, while phosphorus and potassium encourage flowering and fruit growth. The fact is that all three are necessary for all growth. Also, there are at least a couple dozen other minerals that are necessary in trace amounts for healthy plant growth.

Thirty years ago, Sunset magazine asked researchers at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo to test various fertilizer formulas on various plants. It turns out that in California's soils, only nitrogen makes a difference in the size and amount of fruit.

Because of the alkalinity of our soil, phosphorus and potassium when added from above the ground do not migrate to the root zone of most plants. Nitrogen, however, moves quite easily with rain and irrigation. Therefore, nitrogen needs to be added a few to perhaps several times during the growing season (depending on rain and watering practices). Phosphorus and potassium should be added at planting time in the bottom of the planting hole, or dug deeply in to the garden bed.

Since potting soil often contains little or no natural soil, plants in containers are more dependent on a balanced fertilizer providing all three main minerals, N-P-K, along with other minerals, added throughout the growing season.


 All that having been said, here is what we do:

First of all, we don't use chemical fertilizers--only organic. We prefer to use our own homemade compost. 

At planting time we add a bit of 10-10-10 or 5-5-5 organic fertilizer (usually this one) and/or compost. We also add trace minerals in the form of Sea-90 at planting time and once during the growing season.

During the growing season we add compost around the plants and mix it into the top layer of soil. For extra nitrogen, we add coffee grounds (N-P-K: 2.0 - 0.3 - 0.3) or tea grounds (4.0 - 0.6 - 0.4). You could instead add blood meal (15 - 1.3 - 0.7) which is a quick release fertilizer or cotton seed meal (7 - 2.5 - 1.5) which releases over time. Cotton seed meal offers us the added benefit of acidifying our alkaline soil, perhaps helping P and K to migrate down into the root zone more effectively.

We also rotate our crops. Legumes (peas, beans, clover) fix nitrogen in the soil as they grow and release more of it into the soil as they decompose, so we plant these in each raised bed every three years or so.

Here is the bottom line from the Sunset article: Since phosphorus, potassium and micro nutrients don't need to be added to the soil frequently, the only element we need to provide with regular fertilizing is nitrogen. For us that means getting the best deal on high-nitrogen fertilizers. We have a constant supply of coffee and tea grounds, and grass clippings, and compost, all for free! Pretty good deal. If you have to buy your fertilizer, get the most nitrogen for the money and follow the label directions for application rates and frequency--too much nitrogen at one time can "burn" your plants.

Additional resource:
52 Weeks in the California Garden by Robert Smaus, pp.137-139.

March in the Garden

Plant veggies indoors and out.

Plant summer veggies.

Fertilize lawns.

Begin to fertilize citrus and avocado.

Plant cool-season vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, spinach, radishes, Asian greens, lettuce, and parsley.

Harden-off tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants by moving them outside, beneath a plastic cover or inside a cold frame. Plant them in the garden after the last possible frost.

Prune away frost-damaged areas on citrus.

Time to Make Sauerkraut

We have red and white cabbage ready to harvest. Both varieties make good sauerkraut. Red cabbage makes a deep magenta sauerkraut. Mixing white and red, of course, makes pink sauerkraut. 

We like sauerkraut, but we don't care for the vinegary, mushy, stringy kind found in the market in cans or jars. Store-bought, canned sauerkraut has been pasteurized and therefore, the good bacteria (probiotic) and enzymes have been destroyed as has the vitamin C, and other goodies.

We make our own for the better nutrition, but mostly because we like it. It is a little bit sour, and the cabbage is still crisp and tastes like cabbage. If you like sauerkraut at all, or cabbage, once you see how easy it is to make, you'll want to try making some yourself. Once you taste this sauerkraut, you'll want to make some more.

At harvest time, we make a big batch in a crock, but we also make small batches in quart jars when we can find good, organic cabbage (on sale) in the market. Non-organic cabbage that has been sprayed to kill insects or weeds may be slow to ferment or not ferment at all. We use either green or red cabbage or a combination of the two. Here are some fermentation crock options.

All you need to make your own small batch is a head of cabbage, some sea salt, a quart jar with a tight fitting lid, a sturdy bowl, and something with which to pound the cabbage, like a wooden meat tenderizing mallet.

Here's a simple recipe from Nourishing Traditions (page 92):

Sauerkraut

Makes 1 quart

1 medium cabbage, cored and shredded
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
1 tablespoon sea salt
4 tablespoons whey (if not available, use an additional 1 tablespoon salt)

In a bowl, mix cabbage with caraway seeds, sea salt and whey. Pound with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer for about 10 minutes to release juices. Place in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar and press down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices come to the top of the cabbage. The top of the cabbage should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage. The sauerkraut may be eaten immediately, but improves with age.

Notes: We don't always add the caraway seeds. You can easily make your own whey and in the process, sour cream, or cream cheese. See Making Whey.

Here is an excerpt from a great little book on making sauerkraut and other lacto-fermented veggies we recommend:

"Attention was focused on the nutritional importance of sauerkraut when, in the 18th century, sailors often suffered from scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency. Captain Cook sailed around the world, carrying barrels of sauerkraut, not losing a single man to scurvy during his three-year voyage"

From Making Sauerkraut and Pickled Vegetables at Home: Creative Recipes for Lactic Fermented Food to Improve Your Health (Natural Health Guide), pg. 9.

Remember:  Unlike some others on the Internet, we will never, ever, ever recommend a book, product, practice, or process that we ourselves have not purchased or used consistently and with good, consistent results.

Mini-Ecosystems on Our Mini-Farm

At our place, when our mini-ecosystems are running as they should, the goats, chickens, ducks, worms, catfish and tilapia, all work together to feed each other and us humans.

The chickens like to get to the fresh goat manure as soon as it comes out of the goat. They peck it open to get to undigested seeds and, we presume, parasites. In the process, the chickens scratch to turn the manure into the straw bedding of the goat pen. Thanks to the chickens the composting bacteria begin their work even before we muck out the pen.

The straw and manure from the pen go to one of several compost bins or piles until the composting action cools. In the meantime, we dump kitchen scraps on top of these piles and let the chickens and ducks have at them. They add manure to the piles as the chickens scratch and turn the compost, speeding the decomposition.

 

From there the cooled, but not necessarily completed compost goes either to the garden as mulch or to the worm bin to become vermicompost (worm castings). The worms go to feed the fish, ducks, and chickens. Most of vermicompost goes to the garden, some goes as tea to feed the duckweed, while a bucketful (with worms) goes to the bottom of the empty compost bin ready to receive more muck from the goats.

The fish eat the duckweed, and in moderation and for variety the following: garden and kitchen scraps, chicken and duck manure (and the flora these encourage), worms, chopped offal from the duck and chicken butchering, and raw scrambled eggs.

The ducks and chickens receive the fish offal, greens from garden and the aquaponic grow beds, and duckweed (the ducks like it wet, the chickens like it dry).

Solid fish waste is filtered out of the fish tanks to feed the garden and to help heat up the compost as needed.

Goats get leafy greens from the garden and aquaponic beds.

The humans keep it all moving and healthy. In return we get veggies, fruits, nuts, herbs, eggs, milk, meat, and fish.