Tag: garden

Spring Seeds

March 3, 2018

Spring Seeds

Florida likes to tease our tropical plants a bit with a fake spring.  It’s really the start of spring weather but we will have at least one more cold snap to remind us that we do participate briefly in the season the rest of the country calls winter.

My favorite plant (outside of anything edible and my personal favorite trio of roses, gardenia, and Camilla) type is bulb.  In Florida, many bulbs thrive with minimum care.  Our yard had a few worn beds of overgrown bulbs when we arrived.  Year one was break them up and replant.

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Year two is sprouting.  (See how I love bulbs!  Fast growing, hardy and results in a year!)

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Elephant ears are one of my favorites, but this yard has two types of elephant ears, bananas, gorgeous lilies, fire-flowers, a yellow-red lily with a huge 6” bloom (just a green few in the picture here as tall, cup-like leaves with “spokes”), and the normal replanted ones like celery, onion, and garlic.  Celery bottoms replant and grow until they are tired of being stepped on.  We have one two-year pineapple and two newbies.  Two garlic cloves are growing. Dozens of onions dot the design.

And we have what we call “bonus plants” these come from our fertilizer.20180302_173445.jpg

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We fertilize with an organic mix of hay, biodegraded plant material, and chicken droppings.  Since our philosophy is to waste nothing, our chickens end up eating a lot of kitchen scraps that include seeds.  This often leads us to wonderful “bonus plants.”

These gems are usually milo, wheat, millet, collard, eggplant, citrus, pepper, or tomato!  We’ve noted cucumber, sunflower, and pumpkin as well.  When we find a tomato, we baby it.  Usually, though, the next day the lizard hunter has trampled it even though the gardens are strictly off limits.  Any lizard who makes it to the house or the garden is safe!

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But this spring we were babying one tiny tomato in the front porch garden when today, voila! ~ ~ We discovered this literal bed of tomatoes hiding under an elephant ear!  We’re so excited we haven’t figured out if we want to attempt to dig them up and separate them while they are small or just leave them in this area they appear to like.  (I’m beginning to believe a single chicken must have eaten an entire bag of tomatoes last season!)

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All of our young pullets are finally hens, laying and regularly producing so we have an average excess of 10 dozen eggs a week!  Now our chickens pay for themselves and the dogs!  (The money we get from the market for our eggs pays for chicken feed and dog feed.)  I love the seeds of spring!

20180302_173503.jpg(So does Lucas, who had to have his picture taken without his dirty shirt.)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

 

Garden Lesson

February 16, 2018

Garden Lesson

Cold, actually cool (we’re in Florida, “cold” means less than 50 degrees), breezes attacked us.  Winter means pruning roses, repotting figs, starting seeds in pots, and refreshing the soil in beds for spring sowing, all to prepare the garden for a new crop.

Newness.

Even though spring is several weeks away, we are preparing for it.  We break ground in the old soil, turn it, remove the weeds, add new fertilizer, repair containers, and get everything ready for new life.  Taking a deep breath, I wonder at how our lives revolve in seasons.  Being broken, removing old things, repairing ourselves, adding fresh knowledge to keep us alive; to be healthy we are continually renewing our minds and hearts.

Gardens teach us so much about patience, care, and investing in the future with uncertainty as our only guarantee.  I can perfectly prepare the soil, make a perfect bed, and give my seeds the best chance at life – sometimes they grow and flower beautifully, but sometimes life happens; a storm, flooding, foraging animals, tramping children, drought, pests.  Sometimes the crop fails, but I patiently restart for the next season.  This reminds me how I love my children; I do my best, pray, and trust in God to guide their hearts to Him.  It’s also the same way God loves us – patiently repairing us time and again and starting us anew each time.

Gardens teach us so much of life.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Conquering Ticks

Our natural solution to ticks.

August 10, 2017

Conquering Ticks

We live on what we call a tiny farm.  It’s just over an acre.  It was abandoned before our landlord bought it, spruced it up, and cut down all the brush.  When we arrived in April, we discovered that a twenty-foot walk from our carport to the front step attracted lots of ticks!  Not the big, easy-to-see dog ticks, but tiny ticks the size of a period!  (Yes, some are so small they can fit on the head of a sewing pin, the girls have tried it – they also are fascinating to look at under a microscope because the light goes through them!)  Some were slightly bigger.  (No, we’ve never taken pictures of them!  We are usually inside when we find them and we smash, burn, or flush them, instantly!)

Research taught us these were a variety of deer tick.  The small ones are called “seed ticks.”  In part of the tick’s life cycle, they are newly emerged in their tick form (small adult form) and need just a little blood to finish growing.  So they bite and release.  The duration of this bite is between ten minutes and an hour, so sometimes we caught them and got them off.  We got very adept at distinguishing tick bites from the bites of other minuscule horrors of Florida, like sand gnats, mosquitoes, fire ants, and yellow flies.  We all know that ticks attach themselves once they are full adults.  (For this variety, full adult size is about 1/8th of an inch in diameter – the size of a small print “o”.)

I hate ticks.  (Who doesn’t?)  I don’t like pesticides.  (We want to eat food from this yard!)

Luckily, I have chickens!

Chickens are opportunistic omnivores (aka, scavengers).  This means while most people envision them eating dry seeds and corn, they actually have a palate that inclines them toward consumption of living organic material such as insects, microscopic organisms, fresh new plant shoots, and anything moving that is small enough to fit in their beak.  My chicken flock has always been known to hunt actively for mosquitoes and flies.  (Yes, they run along under the flying insect and jump to attack once they perceive catch is possible.  Several times they have smashed into a fence or wall while hunting in this manner.  Side-effect: human entertainment.)

Roosters (grown-up males) seem to find ant larvae a delicacy and get all excited digging up ant beds and telling the others, “here, some awesome food!”  (A few hens join in this feast, but others look at the ant-larvae-loving chickens with “eww, gross” expressions.)

Our laying hens (females) and breeding roosters stay in the covered henyard.  Our “biddie-babies” (the girls have made-up terms for every stage; this is newly hatched to 6 weeks) and “baby-toddlers” (6 to 10 weeks) share the brooding pens so they can be protected from rain, draft, and heat in the pre-feathered chick stage (biddie-babies) and to protect them from our area’s population of kites (beautiful, small hawk-like birds who hunt young chickens).  The “big toddlers” (10 to 15 weeks) and “teenagers” (15 to 24 weeks) roam near the henyard because they are too big for the kites to carry away.

They will forage all day for insects and leave the free-choice feed completely alone.  They stay within about 25 feet of their water source at all times (during or just after a light rain, they may wander a bit farther, but not normally).  They LOVE seed ticks!

Within two weeks of our natural pest control plan, we could walk to the carport with zero ticks!  Within a month, the strip of back yard where we hang clothes and the kids play was nearly tick-free!  It’s been five months and they have cleared an expanded circle that includes parts of the front yard.

(My bulb beds helped grow the circle as they love to eat insects that eat the bulbs and the plants hold dew.)

Slowly, our chickens are conquering the tick population in the rest of the yard!

In closing, if you have a tick problem and don’t mind chickens scratching through your plant beds, maybe consider a pest control plan that rewards you with organic fertilizer… and eggs too!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Introduction

Updated October 7, 2020

Who I Am (Introduction)

   Most importantly to me, I’m a wife, mother, home-school teacher, and friend.

That sounds really simple… so, how about adding in our hobby garden, ongoing “school project” flock of chickens, outdoor Guinea Pigs, twittering parakeets, one sweet bunny, the fact that I’m a mother to seven (and yes, I’d love more) children and one dog (okay, so Prim is Christina’s dog), published author with dozens of stories, and outside of the home, I am a Gymnastics Coach at WGV Gymnastics (started August 2018).

Okay, so why on Earth would I start a blog?  (Because I need something else on my plate?  Because I’m crazy?  Because I love drowning in deadlines and yelling “Just a minute!” at the top of my lungs?)

No.

Honestly, it’s because I love to teach.  I learn best by watching (or reading) about other people’s successes and blunders.  (Here, you will read both… but that’s okay because we are all human!)

I also love to write.  (Otherwise completing a science-fiction fantasy novel for young adults would NEVER have happened.)

I’m hoping to create a fun, happy place with this blog where people can catch a glimpse of my crazy, wonderful, amazing life and hopefully glean a few pearls of wisdom.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~ Nancy Tart

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