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I have a number of smaller projects in my garden that I want to write about today. The big project I’m working on is our new chicken coop but there’s not much new to report yet, but do look out for the upcoming third part in the series.

Mulching

We have a rather big large lawn next to the kitchen garden. It’s justified by the fact that the kids love to play on it instead sitting indoors watching gardening programs Curious George. I dream about the day when the lawn is not needed anymore and can be replaced by raised beds with lots of strawberries and black currant bushes. Or maybe just wild nature. A lawn is a monoculture, but to make the best of it, the by-product is brilliant for gardening purposes. The  grass clippings can be used as mulch on your vegetable beds:

The purpose is to retain soil moisture, so this is what I’m trying out, and it seems to be working. The soil is moist beneath the grass clippings (I insist ):

What you can’t see is what happened hours later, when the weeds decided to grow right through the mulch. Hmm. Need… more… mulch. I hope this will kill the weeds if I just keep adding more and more mulch. Time will tell. Worst case scenario is that I’ll have a s… load of weeds under there, taking up all the nutrients.

Harvest planning

Up until now I’ve had the problem that when my lettuces/radishes/spinach were finally ready for harvest, I would have so much of it that it would go bad before we could ever managed to eat all of it. This is a result of sowing all of the seeds for the season all at once at the beginning of the season. Which again is a result of me being lazy. I like to get work in phases; preparing soil -> sowing -> weeding / watering -> harvesting -> done deal. But this is not smart when dealing with the mentioned crops. Instead of planting sowing my 4 rows of spinach on the same day, I’ll try sowing 1 row, then wait a couple of WEEKS, then sow another row and so on. Then in the end I hope I won’t have to throw away 3 rows of spinach because the plants look like small trees, okay?

Potatoes

Sneaky bastards. The other day I felt so proud proclaiming in front of my girlfriends that the potatoes had finally put out flower buds. She went out and confirmed it and we were both very happy farmers. god I hate that name .
The next day I went out to take a look at the wonder again – but the flower buds were all gone! Not a trace. WTF? I asked my girlfriend to go out and check again, but she couldn’t see them either. And that’s when we started discussing lucid dreaming
Apparently potato plants are very protective of their flowers because fortunately they’re back. They just hide the flower buds the best they can in the evening. I don’t know why. Fearing the dangerous night… pigeons, eh?

So we decided to dig up a potato plant for dinner. I mean, the plants were more than 50 cm (20 inches) tall. FAIL! The potatoes beneath the surface were only 1 cm (0.4 inch) in diameter. So now we’re waiting for the potatoes to blossom and maybe even wilt before trying again. (And sowing even earlier next year.)

Chicken Coop project

Inches to centimeters, marking, sawing. Industry. It’s going to be heavy.

Below you’ll find my kitchen garden layout for 2010:

1. Potatoes (48 plants)
2. Potatoes (48 plants)
3. Root vegetables (carrots, parsnip, beets)
4. Legumes and brassica (radish, peas, corn, runner beans, broccoli, cauliflowers)
5. Misc. (squash, rucola, spinach, leeks,  onions)
6. Misc. (carrots, onions, leeks)
7. Flowers

Against the wall on the left I have 17 tomatoes and 2 cucumber plants.

North is to the left.

(Also known as the chickenDIYguides review.)

The product is put together by Mary Nelson with help from Jim Stanley. It consists of more than 300 pages of plans for building your own chicken coop, spread out into several ebooks included in the product. A large part of the material you’ll receive is bonus material including small ebooks and a link collection pointing to 26 YouTube videos. I paid $40 to gain access to the instant download area and I paid $10 in taxes. You can get the Chicken Coop Guide here.

7 individual ebooks are available dividing the collection of plans into 3 groups: Small, mid-size and large. What size of coop you need depends on whether you want normal hens or Bantam hens (small hens).

Small coop: 4 plans available for 4-5 hens (or 5-7 Bantams). Built mostly from 1×4″ or 2×4″ studs and 1/4″, 1/2″ or 3/4″ plywood.

Mid-size coop: 1 plan available for 10 hens (or 14 Bantams). Built mostly from 2×4″ studs and 1/2″ or 3/4″ plywood.

Large coop: 2 plans available for 16 hens (or 24 Bantams). Built mostly from 2×4″ studs and 3/4″ plywood.

If you’re new to raising chickens the bonuses that come with the product will help you become aware of 6 important things to consider before building your coop: How much space do you need for raising your chickens, how to protect against predators, how to protect against the weather, deciding what size of coop you need, how to raise chickens in a convenient way, and deciding what type of chicken you want.

The bonus link collection includes videos on for example how to provide drinking water throughout the winter using a 60 watt light bulb that is always on, or providing protection against snow using a shower curtain over your chicken coop.

A separate bonus ebook on building an incubator is available. It teaches that chicken egg incubation is optimal at 37-39 C (99-102 F) and 50-55% humidity, but for the last 3 days, 35 C (95 F) and 65 % humidity will be best. Details for securing this type of environment is described in the ebook. Yet another ebook in the bonus pack consists of explanations of chicken talk terms, like for instance Bantam – which are half-sized chickens for ornamental purposes; crop – part of the chickens digestive system; grit – bits of rock and sand that chickens eat that goes into the crop and helps with digestion; and wormer – medicine for treating worms.

What I LIKE about Chicken Coop Guide

• Despite the fact that the product is split into several pieces the download page keeps it all together very well.
• The design of each coop is neat – I like the way they look.
• The building plans are easy to understand.
• The level of plan detail is high, with dimensions on all pieces.
• Example photos are available for some of the coops showing actual coops that were built.

What I DON’T Like about Chicken Coop Guide

• One of the plans contains a vital table that is almost unreadable due to bad resolution. I’ll have to rewrite it myself to make it usable.
• The graphics is rather coarse and takes some getting used to.
• Everything is in inches rather than S.I. units. I’ll have to print out a plan and add the converted numbers myself manually.
• As a first time chicken keeper I would like to have a plan for a simple chicken run, although it would be simple.
• To make it easier for the reader the 6 bonus ebooks should be merged and edited into a single ebook.

Who should buy the Chicken Coop Guide

In my opinion you would need years, if not decades, of experience as a hobby woodworker to follow the building plans, due to the level of details of the coops, or at least access to help from someone with this kind of experience. You’ll need to cut and fit things together in angles which is not something you’ll easily do if you never touched a saw before. But then again – it’s details like this, that makes the coops in these plans so pretty darn easy on the eyes.

You can get the Chicken Coop Guide here.