Category: Gardening

My Surprise for the Day

You will never guess what I found yesterday!

I was out in the garden making my rounds.  I had just finished picking okra and cucumbers, and was on my way to the tomatoes, but I decided to make a stop off at the hen house to check on the ladies.

Lately I have made it a practice to open the nesting box door to see if there has been any interest in the nesting boxes.  It is about time for the Easter Eggers to start laying, if I am lucky, and each day I wonder if it is my lucky day.

A few weeks ago I put a store bought egg out there to encourage the ladies to check the boxes out, but the activity has been minimal.  Even so, sometimes the white egg appears to be gone, though it is always just buried in the leaves in the nesting box.

As I opened the nesting box door yesterday, the silly white egg was gone again.  I dug around in the leaves and found it, then carefully placed it back on top of the leaves.  As I was preparing to close the door, low and behold I noticed a chicken!  She was laying at the opposite end of the boxes and had burrowed out a nest.  I quickly closed the door and made my way to the house.

It wasn’t much longer until we heard cackling commencing!  One or more of the girls sounded as if she was having a total come apart.  🙂

We went on to church, expecting we might have a little surprise when we arrived home after church.  Sure enough, we did!  We all eagerly went to the hen house as soon as we arrived home, me with camera in hand.  🙂  Here’s what we found:

Our First Egg

Our First Egg

You will notice, perhaps, this is not an Easter Egger! That is right! One of the Rhode Island Reds was the first layer. Unfortunately, I can’t tell these birds apart, so it could have been any one of the four.

The Potential Winner

The Potential Winner

Here’s a couple of more shots: a better one of the egg, and a comparison shot vs. a store-bought, large, white egg.

Comparison: First Egg vs. Large Store EggComparison: First Egg vs. Large Store Egg

Comparison: First Egg vs. Large Store Egg

Our First Egg - A Better View

Our First Egg – A Better View

As mentioned earlier, this was a surpise.  I expected eggs any day now, but I expected them from one of the Easter Eggers.  The best I can understand it, the Easter Eggers are unpredictable on when they will lay their first egg, but with six of them, I am expecting one any day now.  The Rhode Island Reds are younger than the Easter Eggers though.  We bought the Easter Egger chicks on March 15 of this year, and we bought the Rhode Island Reds on March 29th.  Neither were more than a week old; probably just a few days old.  I don’t have the calculations now, but I expected the Easter Eggers to lay sometime between the end of July and the first of October (yes, unpredictable from what I can tell), and I expected the Rhode Island Reds to begin laying at the end of August.  I just checked though, and it seems the Rhode Island Reds should all start laying about right now.  SIGH.  How do I get so confused on this stuff??

With any luck, the Easter Eggers will be laying soon too, along with the rest of the Rhode Island Reds, and we will start having a beautiful mix of brown and blue/green eggs soon.

Those who raise chickens often say the first egg costs many hundred dollars, but those thereafter are inexpensive. I haven’t calculated the cost of this first egg, but I know why people say that. It wasn’t cheap getting to this point, but those are sunk costs. Now I just have healthy, inexpensive eggs that come from chicken who get time to free-range daily.

Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables

As a home gardener, I am no stranger to funny looking fruits and vegetables.  In fact, many home crops look that way.  It doesn’t change the taste a bit though.  In fact, I am humored at how heirloom vegetables now sell for a premium, but no one minds the oddities that come along with those.  Even so, do you think all tomatoes that come off the commercial vine are round, perfectly red, and almost perfectly sized for a bun?  Of course not!  But do you know what happens to those imperfect tomatoes?  They are likely to be disposed of.  Sure, some may be sold to companies that use those less-than-perfect looking vegetables in their soups or other products, but many are just disposed of.

This video, Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables, does a good job at showing the ridiculousness of our decision making with regards to fruits and vegetables.

What about you?

Would you buy inglorious fruits and vegetables if there were no discount?

If not, would you buy them at a discount?

tomatoes

 

Yes, I know these aren’t as unlgorious looking as the ones at the link above, but apparently I don’t often take pictures of inglorious vegetables.

Chicken Eyes

It won’t be long, my friends. It won’t be long until some of the girls start laying. Perhaps a week, perhaps a month. If they are really late bloomers, sometime in October, but it won’t be long. I am checking their laying boxes daily even now though.

Check out this cute Easter Egger giving me the eye:

That look!

Are you Lookin’ at Me?

Did you know that chickens are near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other? According to FreshEggsDaily.com:

Just before hatching, a chick turns in the shell so its right eye is next to the shell (and absorbs light through the shell) and its left eye is covered by its body. As a result the right eye develops near-sightedness to allow a chicken to search for food, while the left eye develops far-sightedness, to allow a chicken to search for predators from afar. That is why when a hawk flies overhead, you will notice your chickens tilt their heads with their left eye to the sky.

I suppose this means she was using her right eye so she could see me better. 🙂

Bagging Corn

A few days ago I told you about how to waste your time planting corn. Last night I decided to practice bagging the corn tassels for hand pollinating.

20140721-072446-26686474.jpg

The purpose of this is to capture pollen from the tassels, which would then be ideally spread on the silks of the newly forming corn. To do this right, the silks also need to be bagged, but I have already resolved that it is too late this year to have success with this. Right now I just want to be sure I understand how to bag the tassels so I can hand pollinate next year.

As frustrating as it is to find I have wasted my time, at least I have learned something for next year.

How to Waste Your Time Planting Corn

I have always had a fascination with gardening, but it wasn’t until the last ten years or so that I really got into it.  Even so, I am reminded how little I know year after year.

Last year I got the idea that I wanted to plant Landrace Popcorn.  I’ll probably tell more about that sometime in the future, but in essence it is open-pollinated popcorn from which seed is selectively saved year after year.  That is definitely an oversimplification, but it is enough for now.  Last year I also planted Glass Gem Popcorn, which is absolutely beautiful, but almost worthless as a popping corn.  Here, check this corn out!

Glass Gem Popcorn

Unfortunately, I didn’t time these crops very well and they cross pollinated, affecting the quality of my popping corn.

This year I tried again, but low and behold, my interests in other things were sparked again, and while I didn’t grow Glass Gem Corn, I did grow two ancient corns that are flour corns.  I meticulously planned the dates each would mature, and I was sure I would avoid cross pollination this year.  Wouldn’t you know it, one of the ancient corns matured at exactly the same time as the Landrace Popcorn.  GRRRRR!

In an effort to stem the damage, I have been attempting to hand pollinate the corns, though I found out last night that I am not really doing this the right way, so there is no telling what I will get.  My guess is the seeds from this corn will probably be useless next year, but I suppose I can consider myself fortunate because I learned something from it.  While the wind was low this morning I walked through the garden attempting to hand pollinate better and I shook the stalks, hoping to spread the pollen on the corn while it was less likely to cross with the other.  Only time will tell if I was successful.

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