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banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: Meet the Chickens: Bellatrix the Black Australorp

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2012/07/meet-chickens-bellatrix-black.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. July 12, 2012. Meet the Chickens: Bellatrix the Black Australorp. All of us in the family are huge. Fans of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, so it was only natural to go with a Harry Potter naming theme for our chickens when we got them as day-old chicks in April of 2011. This is Bellatrix, our Black Australorp. Bellatrix the Black Australorp. Bellatrix the Witch (photo courtesy). Snuggling with me as a little chick. Bellatrix has been th...

banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: DIY Outdoor Sink: Rinse Veggies, Save Water

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2012/06/diy-outdoor-sink-rinse-veggies-save.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. June 13, 2012. DIY Outdoor Sink: Rinse Veggies, Save Water. Last month, my handy husband put together an outdoor sink for the homestead using an old stainless steel double basin our neighbors were throwing away, plus some 2 x 2s and a few small items purchased at Hibbert Lumber. My new outdoor, water-saving, veggie prep station! Mr English filling the rinse basin with just-picked oranges. Chard soaking in the rinse basin. Now when I triple ...

banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: Double-digging Dividends

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2013/08/double-digging-dividends.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. August 26, 2013. The big double dig is paying off! Back in October of 2012, I started a double digging project. Inspired by reading John Jeavons' book How To Grow More Vegetables. The goal was to improve the soil in my garden beds and hopefully increase veggie production. It was a lot of work, and even though I knew I wouldn't see the results for many months, I opted to broaden my experiment and double dig several more beds. It's a lot of w...

banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: Fleeting Fungi

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2013/04/fleeting-fungi.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. April 9, 2013. One great thing about garden paths mulched with woodchips is watching all the fascinating stuff that emerges from the mulch after a rain. When the woodchips have come from a variety of sources, it makes the fungal show all the more interesting. Most of what appears is stuff I've never encountered before (like last May's dog vomit slime mold. Drippy, yucky mushroom. Then there was this understated, grey-hatted mushroom:. That'...

banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: Tour de Cluck 2013 is Next Saturday

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2013/05/tour-de-cluck-2013-is-next-saturday.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. May 17, 2013. Tour de Cluck 2013 is Next Saturday. Davis is one of a growing number of towns hosting tours of backyard chicken coops and gardens, and the city's fourth annual Tour de Cluck, a Bicycle Chicken Coop Crawl will take place next Saturday, May 25th. The Tour is one of the main fundraisers for Yolo Farm to Fork. The Fowlery at Banyan's End. If you can't get a ticket, there are lots of other activities in addition to the actual bicy...

banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: WARNING: Don't Read While Eating Breakfast!

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2012/05/warning-dont-read-while-eating.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. May 14, 2012. WARNING: Don't Read While Eating Breakfast! Uh, mom.it looks like Rico barfed in the mulch.". Indeed, the first time I saw this, um, development, in the mulch a few weeks ago, that's exactly what I thought had happened. Dog Vomit Slime Mold, stage 1. A different pile, in stage 2. It basically still looks like this, two weeks later. Thank God for the Internet! Its official name is- appropriately- Dog Vomit Slime Mold, and it tu...

urbanshare.blogspot.com

Urban Share Community Gardening Project: November 2009

http://urbanshare.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

Sunday, November 22, 2009. Middle School Work Day at St. Paulus Garden. The youth from Trinity Lutheran Church in Pleasanton. Stopped by to do some work on our garden. They helped haul bricks to build a raised bed garden. These bricks are the rubble from St. Paulus' old foundation. Then we covered the bricks with clear plastic to turn our raised bed into a temporary greenhouse. If you want to recreate a garden like ours, note that we probably would not have used bricks (they're really heavy! Our first mu...

banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: August 2013

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. August 26, 2013. The big double dig is paying off! Back in October of 2012, I started a double digging project. Inspired by reading John Jeavons' book How To Grow More Vegetables. The goal was to improve the soil in my garden beds and hopefully increase veggie production. It was a lot of work, and even though I knew I wouldn't see the results for many months, I opted to broaden my experiment and double dig several more beds. It's a lot of w...

banyans-end.blogspot.com

Banyan's End: Double Digging

http://banyans-end.blogspot.com/2012/10/double-digging.html

Sustainable Living and (sub)Urban Farming in the Central Valley. October 1, 2012. Do you double dig your garden beds? That's a question I've been asked more than once since I started working full time on the homestead and growing most of the family's vegetables. To be honest, I hadn't even heard the term "double digging" until last year, and I didn't know it involved using a very particular method until I read John Jeavon's book How to Grow More Vegetables. In order to loosen highly compacted soils. ...