National Cow Day

Driving in the car today I heard the morning guys announce that today was National Cow Day. Now these two DJs are basically throw-backs to the WKRP in Cincinnati show. In fact, they were probably rejects from the show so I'm not too sure if what they were saying was actually fact or not. But according to them, today is Cow Day and they had some interesting facts about cows. Cows graze north to south or south to north, I can't remember which. Now I have seen a lot of cows here on PEI and I can't ever recall them all pointing in one direction as they ate. It's something you'd think I'd notice. But may-be not, usually when I see cows, I'm driving so I'm not paying a whole lot of attention to their compass points. Another little known fact (according to the DJs) is cows like to solve puzzles like opening a doorknob and such. Apparently, their heart rate increases as well as their brain activity. I wouldn't be surprised if that is true, animals are often a lot more than what we dumb humans realize.

So in honour of National Cow day, I am posting the closest thing the DaM Farm has to a cow. That's Dusk, at 130 lbs, he could pass as a small cow, especially with that white streak down his face, lots of cows have those. Dusk doesn't eat pointing a certain direction, he eats where the food falls. He also wouldn't solve a puzzle if his life depended on it. But Dusk can dance. If you look at the picture, you will see his hind feet are 4 - 5 inches higher than his front feet and his hips are higher than they should be, too. Well, you kinda have to squint to see that on account of the branches. Anyhow, he looks that way because he's dancing. He loves to go under the lowest branches of his favorite tree and, standing in place, jump up and down using only his hind feet. I've never known a dog to do that before. But I've never seen a cow open a door by using a doorknob either. So if one is possible, I'm sure the other is too.

The Potato Project

I've grown potatoes before but had given it up because the potato bugs had a field day and ate the plants all up. My neighbour grows potatoes and I asked him what he did about the bugs, he said he picked them off one by one. I tried that. It didn't work for me at all because A) The bugs make the most disgusting crunchy sound when picked and squashed and B) I really don't have 3 hours plus a day to be picking off bugs because as sure as the sun shines, I can pick 'em off in the morning and by lunch time a whole new crew has moved in and started another munch-in. I decided that my neighbour most likely just sent all his bugs over to my garden.

I was disappointed that I didn't have potatoes because the first year was so great. I never really considered growing potatoes; I live on Prince Edward Island and potatoes are plentiful and cheap (until lately). But I was visiting a friend and she asked me if I would like some russet potato sets for my garden. I love red potatoes! As she blithely cut sets for me, I started asking questions. How deep do I plant them? How far apart? Do I plant them skin side up or down? How high should the rows be? Should they be watered daily until I see sprouts? Do they need a lot of water or are they a little drought resistant? She handed me a paper bag full of potato cuttings and said, "Would you please stop micro-managing? Dig a trench, throw them in, cover 'em up, get on with your life." So I did and I got beautiful potatoes. That was the first and last time I ever had any success with taters. The next year the bugs found my potatoes.

I'm hoping my luck will change this year. Another friend of my told me about the tire method of growing potatoes. So I'm going to try that. The theory is great, makes a lot a sense so naturally I'm suspicious of it. If there's one thing I've learnt in my gardening adventures it's everything is fine in theory, it's the nuts and bolts of the operation that messes everything up. And I always seem to have extra nuts hanging around. The process is simple, you get an old tire fill it with earth/compost/worm castings, stick a few potatoes in it and there you go. As the stalks get high enough, you put another tire on top of the first one and fill it again until only a little bit of the stalks are showing. The theory is the stalk you covered up with earth will start sending out roots and make more potatoes. That makes sense to me. Whenever I start new indoor plants from cuttings, I take off a few bottom leaves and roots will start growing where the leaves used to be. If I leave the leaves on, roots sprout around them. Apparently you can stack the tires 4 deep, and each tire supposedly gives 25 pounds of potatoes.

So I tried it this year and after a couple of teeny tiny little errors (ya notice theory never takes into account the intelligence of the person implementing the theory?), things seem to be coming up roses, or in this case, potatoes. I bought organic red potatoes from the grocery store, cut up a couple and put 8 pieces in the tire and covered them up. I found out, 3 pieces is usually the amount planted in a tire. Ooops. Two week later, I don't have one sprout. No little leafy taters starting up at all. So my neighbour gave me a few of his extras. He said the potatoes I used were probably sprayed with something to stop them from sprouting. Ew. So I planted 4 more and sure enough, the next day the first potatoes I planted make an unexpected appearance. Methinks I planted 'em to deep. Oh well, never mind, I have them growing and they seem to be doing well. The best thing is no bugs so far. I doubt if I will get to 4 tires high because I was late in planting them but I'm interested in seeing if this actually works. I do have some extra tires waiting just in case I need them.

Lessons of Green and Red

I put a lot of extra work into my strawberry patch this spring. Mainly because after picking the berries last year I let the patch go and it became very overgrown. That's pretty much an understatement of the year, I had thistle weeds in there that you'd need a stick of dynamite to get 'em out. I was determined to get my strawberries back into shape. I spent long, mosquito ridden hours digging up stubborn weeds, grass, treelings, etc. An hour and a half's work resulted in one bed being done, I had four, not to mention at least that much more space that had stray strawberry plants in them that I needed to tend to.

About halfway through the second bed, little nagging concerns started scurrying around in my brain, tripping over my nerve endings causing random thoughts to pop into my head, "Not seeing a lot of little white flowers here." and "Geez, where are all the runners?" were two of the most frequent. Well, I figured it was weedy so may-be the plants were overwhelmed, they'd do better now they had their space back.


After I finally got all the weeding done, I topped-dressed the whole bunch with compost and worm casings. Now all I had to do was get to the others that had sprung up outside the beds. Strawberry season came and considering the bounty I got last year, I was looking forward to making jam and freezing lots of strawberries. My yield was seven. Seven berries. Yup, seven, not counting the four or five half eaten ones I didn't pick. Seven.

If all else fails, read the instructions. So I went to my books and found out something very interesting about strawberries. They generally last three years, then they give up the ghost. Not only that but the planlets on the runners need special care if you want them to be fruitful. Wish I had known that before I put in a good 10 hours plus, not to mention a lot of good compost and worm castings. I should have known that strawberries came with an expiry date. I research everything. But strawberries were one of those impulsive buys, where I just stuck 'em in the ground to see what would happen. It was working perfectly so why mess everything up by looking for facts? Obviously, I should have.


Not all is lost. I will wait till the end of strawberry season before doing anything. I'll probably get a couple more I can toss in my cereal. Then I think I'll just till the whole area, being careful not to bother the daisies. Yes, I have two big daisy plants in there that I'd like to keep going. May-be I'll look into how to keep daisies coming back ... before it's too late.

All I Have to Do Now Is The Weeding

And may-be a little comfrey tea in a few weeks...probably top dress the plants at some point, too. But the point is the garden is in. It took longer than usual because the store-bought seeds were dismal. After two weeks, I realized not much was going to come up so I re-planted carrots, snow peas and beans.

I bought a flat of cucumbers because mine from seed didn't seem to be doing much. I think the biggest problem with mine was the flat they were in was on the top shelf on my silly greenhouse when it was toppled by the wind. Many cucumbers perished that day and the remaining ones were grievously wounded, out of the whole flat only six remained. When I went out to plant the new ones, I notice that mine are going like gangbusters. Guess I'll be making lots of pickles and celery relish this year. If I have too much, I can always add a jar or two into my Christmas baskets. Homemade anything seems to be well-appreciated (except if given to a teenager, but the look of mortification and horror on their faces is a Christmas gift in itself.)

The corn is doing really well, it's about 8 - 10 inches high now. The zucchini and pumpkins have flowers and the zucchini already have little tiny baby zucs. The tomatoes I bought are budding, the ones I grew are doing well too. The ones I left in that embarrassing cold frame seem to be much bigger than the ones I transplanted.

So it is done and I'm happy about it. The war on weeds is going full blast and I'm hoping to get out today to pick the ripe strawberries. Gardening is the coolest thing :).

Cold Frame Results

Last April I concocted a pretty sad looking cold frame just to see if it would work. It actually produced a bunch of tomato plants! Which is surprising because the design left a lot to be desired. There was way too much air circulation and things would dry out and I wasn't very good at remembering to water it. On top of that, the weeds also grew like, well weeds, and I wanted to wait before pulling anything so I didn't inadvertently pull tomato plants. So I'm figuring I had a lot more success than I had any right to. I am definitely going to do this again. In fact, I'm hoping to recruit teenage son, P, a pretty decent carpenter, to build me four nice, working, practical, cold frames this summer.

The tomatoes seemed to grow in clumps. At first, I thought I'd just leave them there to grow. Then I figured there wasn't enough room really, I had about 15 - 20 plants so I decided to transplant a few. It was difficult to separate the clumpy tomatoes' intertwining roots so I'm going to have to figure out if I will be able to remedy that. I'm thinking no, if I'm throwing the tomato waste in there in the fall, I don't see how I can avoid clumping. I smoothed and evened out everything as much as possible but I guess tomatoes like to grow together. Once I separated them, I planted them in the new garden I made. They are doing quite well there.

Busy Ceilidh

This morning I found Ceilidh putting the finishing touches on her nest. She's been building it for the last couple of days and I'm pretty sure she'll be having her kits shortly as in within the hour. What is cluing me in that the baby bunny arrival is imminent is how she is gathering the hay for the nest. After gathering the hay in her mouth she'll reach down and pull some fur. Usually when Ceilidh starts mixing the fur in with the hay, she's ready to kindle. She sort of weaves the hay and fur together and that is what I'll find covering the kits. Right underneath the kits it is all pure white fur and under that is nice, comfy hay bedding. She has a system and it really works well, she rarely looses a kit.

Sure enough, as I puttered around, feeding and watering everyone else, I peeked over and found Ceilidh in the nest box cleaning a little squirmy pink mound that passes as a newborn in the rabbit world. Once she is all finished, I'll go investigate and see how many she had and if there are any stillborns, I'll remove them.

That's Chamomile sitting on top of the nest box. From the start, Chamomile, or Camy for short, supervised the whole operation from atop the nest box. She started watching a couple of days ago when Ceilidh started mucking around in the nest box. She seems very interested but she doesn't get in the way. Camy is a young doe I'm growing out to be part of my colony. I hope she is picking up tips and helpful hints from Ceilidh. I'm thinking young does in a colony will be more successful with first litters than single does in a cage sometimes are. I think it helps them to observe an experienced doe get ready for babies. Just another reason why I really like the indoor colony idea.

Little Bagel-Face

One of my Partridge Chantecler chicks ended up with a beak that doesn't line up right. Looks weird and because the beak isn't aligned, he has a cross-eyed look as well. Don named him "Twistee Creme" after a childhood soft ice cream treat he liked. I call him Bagel Face when no-one's around. Sometimes I'll notice the beak is almost perfectly aligned then there are times when it looks like the picture above.

This ailment, as far as I have learned, is commonly called 'cross beak'. The jury is still out on whether it's a genetic thing or a hatch deformity. The usual 'treatment' is to kill the bird. Kind of harsh if you ask me. The theory is they can't eat and will starve to death. So I watch little Bagel Face very carefully and right now he is eating fine and is growing just as well as the other chicks. What's more, he's happy and bright, he gets along with all the chicks and no-one picks on him. He's one of the first ones to greet me in the morning. He's inquisitive and curious. I just can't look at him for too long because I'll burst out laughing. He's a sweet little bird, all things considered. Most importantly, his quality of life is the same as all the other chicks. He's not suffering and he's not unhappy. So unless that changes, I don't see any reason to do him in right now.