Mulching with Free Wood Chips and More Planting

While others were busy with cook-outs and fireworks, we spent our holiday weekend collecting free wood chips to use as mulch in the garden, and also setting out more tomato plants.

Along the nearby highway the state workers have been busily cutting down trees and shredding them,

leaving long piles of fresh wood chips free for the taking!  Nick spent much of Sunday and the Fourth collecting car-loads of chips and bringing them home to  use in the garden as mulch in the pathways.

After ten loads most of the pathways have a thick layer of mulch.  It will most likely take another ten
loads to complete the garden.  For the pathway along the goat yard fence we spread a heavy layer of hay from their yard.  It keeps down the weeds, and since it contains the goat droppings it also fertilizes and the hay breaks down thus building up the soil.

As the plants get a little larger we will mulch them with the small wood chips from the hen house, then we will be finished with weeding for the remainder of the season.

I transplanted my rescued tomato plants to the "old" green bean bed by first preparing their new spots the night before.  I dug a hole for each tomato plant and then filled it with water from the ducks pool which was rich with their droppings.  Overnight the tea soaked in and fed the composted soil.
This morning during a break in the rain, I set an egg into each hole and then planted the tomatoes.
The eggs will break down as the tomato plants grow, releasing it calcium and nutrients for the tomatoes.  Later I will add epsom salt to each plant in the entire garden.

I have found that adding the eggs and the epsom salt has produced undamaged and very tasty tomatoes.   Also, when I mulch with the small wood chips from the chickens I soak them first, until they are saturated with chicken poo tea.  Then I spread them among the plantings several inches thick, leaving only a small area around each plant for watering.

Because the wood chips are saturated they do not wick the water that is given to the plants, and when it rains the fertilizer they are holding in slowly released into the earth to feed the plants.  And the thick layer prevents weeds from growing.

We grow lots of heirloom tomatoes because use tomatoes the most in our cooking.  I have added rutabaga and beets this year, and also increased the number of pepper plants, adding two hot peppers and four banana pepper plants.

Also, added more cabbages, and a row of yellow beans.  The chickens killed off the row of vining peas.  Instead of my usual winter squash I am focusing on pumpkins this year.  There are still many jars of last year's butternut squash still on the pantry shelf.

The few zucchini plants have only just begun to sprout, but since they develop quickly we will have our summer squash at the end of the summer instead of its beginning.

This year will be a year for pickles ans relishes once the cucumbers get started.  The chickens got to that first planting as well, so the 72 new plants are a getting a late start.  And there is plenty of dill which reseeded from last year's crop.  The flowers also reseeded themselves and the floral border along the fence as growing nicely and will start producing flowers soon.

Once again, I am giving onions another try and they are doing nicely, thus far.  I have made certain the compost in which they are planted is nice and loose so they have an easy time expanded their bulbs, and I read somewhere that if we cut back their green stalks to about 4-6 inches it will force their energy to the growing bulb and we will get larger onions.  Fingers crossed.

Our July trip to the farm has been post-poned to the end of the month to include the first two weeks in August.  We have 24 meat chicks and also two hens brooding and we want to be here when our first chicks hatch.  Our ducks which hatch early last month are now on their own.  The parents have chased them out of their home and we relocated them to the smaller chicken run for now.  We still aren't certain of their genders, but are guessing there may be three males and one female.

The mama and papa ducks are living with the chickens now, and mama has taken to laying her daily egg in one of the laying boxes instead of outside in the dirt or mud.  It is so nice to get nice, clean duck eggs again.