New Chicks!

Our family just got some new chicks! RED STARS!!! They are still learning to be friendly! But we can catch them and hold them! They are beautiful!

 LtoR: Ruby, Wilehelmina, and Vanilla!

~Krissy Van Criss~

A Chicken Story...

Well I guess it is my turn to share a story! It is not about gardening, but about our chickens!

Now our chickens have always taken the advantage of our backyard gate being open, to escape down the road or across the road...They have tried to escape three times...but never have gotten hurt or lost!

Once, they notice that the gate was open, and didn't get as far as the edge of our front lawn, when our neighbors spotted them while on a walk! :-P Imagine our surprise! OUR CHICKENS? IN THE FRONT YARD?! Well we just ran to the front and herded them back in!

Another time, I was gone somewhere...when I got back home, my brothers were telling me all about how our chickens got out, and went all the way down the road and to the STOP sign! (remember how I told you that we don't live on a farm? Well, we don't, but we got chickens for our city lot!:) IT was a wonder they didn't get run over.
Our neighbors must have warned us about that incident as well! :-P

The third time, they got out, was just last month. Of course every time, they get out the back gate. This time they went across the road, to a neighbor's house, Thankfully no one lives there, so we had no trouble herding our "naughty" chickens back to our yard. But not without the unusual stares that came our way from passers by! :-D

Oh, the fond memories!

I hope you will share some of your fun memories with us!

~Krissy Van Criss~

How fresh is that egg?

No one wants to crack and egg in the morning, without being sure that it is still good!

Here are some solutions to seeing if your eggs are still fresh...

1. Water test...Fill a bowl with water. Next test each egg by placing it in the bowl, if the egg floats it is bad, if the egg sinks it is still good! (If you use a clear bowl, then testing will be easier). Even if the egg is still on the bottom, but standing a little upright, it is still safe to eat, but if it is floating all the way to the top...ROTTEN (bad) EGG!!!
2. Skillet test...When you place you eggs in the skillet (for breakfeast or just a snack), if the yock is standing upward then it is still fresh, if it is flat then it is not good!

~Krissy Van Criss~

Square Foot Gardening

Hundreds of families across the United States have gardens, whether a small flower box, or three-acre garden. Gardening is not only fun, but also a great way to cut vegetable costs. Hundreds of gardening books exist, but one book in particular, Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space, has some great methods. Mel Bartholomew, the author of the book, came up with this ingenious way to garden - in raised beds. Instead of planting the vegetables in long rows three or four feet apart, he tried planted them in a
square foot. For example, in a twelve by twelve foot garden, planted with only lettuce in the traditional three-feet apart rows, a gardener can grow approximately one hundred heads of lettuce. But, by using 2 three by nine foot raised beds in a twelve by twelve foot garden with the lettuce planted 5 inches apart; a gardener can grow about 590 heads of lettuce! By using the raised-bed style, a garden can grow about six times more than the traditional three-feet apart rows. The raised beds are merely more practical than planting squares straight into the ground. Another method Mel Bartholomew uses to save space is trellises. For example, zucchini take up about three or four square feet of space, but by using a trellis for the plant to grow up on, a gardener only uses about one square foot of space. Square Foot Gardening also has some other really great ideas and methods that help save not only space, but also money. It’s a great book that every gardener should buy!

My Garden with raised beds and trellises.

        ~Susi Van Criss

Garden Stories

We'd love for you to share your different farming and gardening stories, whether funny, inspirational, or informative. If you have a story you'd like to share, send it to krissyandsusi@gmail.com. Please sign your name and include a picture, too. (You can grab a picture off the Internet.)

I guess I'll start the ball rolling.=)

This afternoon, while working in our garden, I was holding a tray of celery plants, when, to my great horror, a spider came crawling up the tray straight toward my hand. I don't know why, but I dropped the whole tray, spilling the plants and dirt. All I think could was, "Why did I do that?" Fortunately, I was able to salvage all but one or two plants. If I'm going to live on a farm someday, I must learn to not be terrified of spiders.=)

Newspaper Potatos

I learned this quick and efficiant way to grow potatos, from a very helpful DVD, called: Homestead Blessings, the Art of Gardening!

All you have to do is...

Take your ready to plant potatos, lay some newspaper down on any part of dirt in your yard (you can do this to the amount of potatos that you have). Place your potatos on top of the newspaper, about a couple inches away from each other...next place a good thick layer of straw over the top of the newspapers and potatos, be sure that it is really thick so that it will be dark. To harvest them, all you have to do is pull away the straw and grab your potatos...that way you don't have to split them when you "dig" them up! :-P Do not be afraid of watering them! :-D

You can get "The Art of Gardening" from this website...Click Here you can watch them demonstrate how to do it on that DVD!

Have Fun Gardening,

~Krissy Van Criss

The Amazing Response of Plants to Music

In recent years, many experiences have been conducted playing music to plants. In 1957, Arthur locker experimented with playing music to his greenhouse. He noticed that his plants grew straighter, developed quicker, and bloomed more abundantly. Eagene Canby, who was from Canada, played Bach’s sonatas to his plants and found that they grew 66% greater than the plants without music. When George Smith, in 1960, conducted the first scientific experiment, planting corn and soybeans in a greenhouse under the same conditions and playing music 24 hours a day, he found that the plants weighed 40% more that other plants.

In 1970, Dorothy Retallack experimented with playing music to marigolds and beans. Her findings were astounding! She noticed that the plants grew toward the speakers when she played the works of Hayden, Brahms, Beethoven, and Schubert. She also discovered that when she

played the music of Led Zappenlin, Vanilla Fudge, and Jimi Hendrix, that the plants leaned away from the speakers. No matter how she oriented her plants, they grew to either escape or embrace the music. Recording a Spanish folk song once played with a string ensemble, and again with

steel drums, she found that the plants leaned ten degrees away from the speakers when the steel drums version were played. Amazingly, when she played the string version of the song, the plants leaned ten degrees toward the speakers.

Increasingly, many more experiments were conducted watching the rate and size of the growth of plants “listening” to music, and that of those that were not. The scientist found that when Bach’s organ music was played, the plants leaned 35 degrees toward the speakers. But nothing compared to R. Shanker’s music! The plants sometimes bent horizontal toward the speakers. Folk and country western music did not effect the plants at all. Significantly, the most stunning results were those of Jazz. Although the plants grew taller and leaned toward the speakers, they had scrawny roots and needed a much larger amount of water.

By looking at the rates of the growth of plants listening to the different types of music, makes us think of what those kinds of music do to the brain development to young children. I think a lot of us will be changing our music style!

~Susi Van Criss

Carrots and Leeks

From "The Organic Fruit and Vegetable Gardener's Year"

Organic Tip:

Leeks grow very well with celery and celeriac, and can be grown very effectively in alternate rows with one or the other. Growing Leeks next to carrots seems to aid the leeks, and at the same time will help to repel carrot fly, so benefiting the carrot crop.

Krissy

The Backyard Homestead

The Backyard Homestead, By Carleen Madigan. This book tells you about the many vegetables that you can grow in your backyard, from a-z, it also gives you recipes that you can us those fruits and veggies with. It also teaches you about animals, meat, poultry and dairy. There is only one thing that I don't particuarly like about this book, and that is, it teaches you how to make beer, but of course I for sure won't be using that recipe... From a quarter of an acre, you can Harvest: 1,400 eggs, 50 lbs of wheat, 60 lbs of Fruit, 2,000 lbs of Vegetables, 280 LBs of Pork and 75 lbs of nuts! Thats a lot of food! Learn how too: Milk a goat, Prune a fruit tree, dry herbs, bake whole grain bread, tap a maple tree, make fresh mozzerella cheese, mill grains for flour, save seeds for next season, and a whole lot more! (I skipped brew bear and make dandilion wine, hehehe. :-P) Put your backyard to work: Grow fresher, organic, better-tasting food all the time. The solution is as close as your own backyard. Grow vegetables and fruits your family loves; keep bees; raise chickens, goats, or even a cow. The Backyard Homestead shows you how it's done. And when the harvest is in, you'll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor!

I highly recommend this book, although they have brew beer and all that, I just skipped those chapters, and go to the next chapter...If you are considering buying this book, here is where you can get it! Click Here...

Krissy

Waterfowl Names...

 From "The Backyard Homestead".

Talking about waterfowl can get a bit confusing. A male duck is  a drake, but a female duck, is called a duck. A male goose is a gander, but a female goose, is called a goose. So a drake is a duck, but a duck isn't always a drake; and a gander is a goose, but a goose isn't always a gander. Got it? Dealing with these fowl groups is much simpler: A bunch of ducks is a bevy and a gang of geese is a gaggle.

Krissy