I ran across a blog about using milk jugs as mini greenhouse's and winter sowing. The website is called WinterSown.org. After paroozing the information I decided to give it a go. Most of these milk jugs were started the first week of March which around here is still very cold. I know you can start mid winter or whenever you get the hankering for hands in dirt.
I even started things like tomatoes that have no business being outside before late May. Some things have already started popping up. The early spring reliable's like cabbages, kale, spinage, swiss chard, you know the cold weather guys.
I've even started different flowers that I would like to get a head start on like marigolds, nasturtiums, and zinnia.
Above: Pak Choi Below: Mixed Lettuce's and Spinage.
This will be my first year attempting the wintersown method. I didn't want this to be my only source for veggies, so I've also done the inside under grow lights method. Since it's warm in there they are understandably way ahead of anything in the milk jugs.
Tomatoes!
Peppers!
We'll see how the milk jugs pan out. The advantage being the plant is already hardened off. So the inside outside, in the sun, in the shade dance that I do every spring would be eliminated. That would be cool!
I made a video for the youTube followers who keep up with me there. Most of them don't know about how I feed my rabbits a natural diet and don't use pellets. I made just a general update about them and posted it. I link it here too so everyone can see the bunz.
We had nice weather this weekend and much outside work was done. Our to-be espalier trees are all in the ground, they are 2 year old trees which isn't ideal for for espalier but such is the way of gardening most of the time. I also planted the 4 red current bushes I intend to cordon on our east side yard that is sun/shade mix, but currents can be understory plants so I'm not worried about the lack of sun. I was also given by my neighbor a branch of black currents, and told to propagate them by sticking whips of them in the ground, leaving about a foot above and 6" below ground. With luck a few of them will root out and I'll have some black current bushes.
I put the first round of baby chickens outside in the rabbit tractor for the first time on Sunday. They were pretty freaked out, the world is a lot bigger than the broody box as it turns out. I snapped a rare picture of all three out in the sun, most of the time they stayed in the back huddled together for safety. I let the two remaining adults chickens loose in the garden to "help" me spread the manure around.
Once I got the ground rototilled, Jake helped me stake out the new garden bed locations. Then I worked away at shoveling the walkway soil into the garden bed area. It's amazing how much soil is in the garden bed area. We had so much pathway in our garden layout before that the growing beds seem really tall. Which is good because it'll give the roots deeper growing space. I know the soil will compact with the rain but it seems huge right now.
Jacob meanwhile was working on finishing up our woodshed and transferring the wood into it's permanent home. We had built a makeshift wood pile and covered it with a tarp, since we got the wood and stove in December it was too late to actually build something. The shed is a pretty simple lean-to using two sides of the fence as walls and only covering one side with plywood. This leaves the east side open for access, since our prevailing wind/rain come from the southwest the wood should stay nice and dry.
Before:
After: Without one plywood wall.
Since the woodshed is over in the "bee hive" corner, Jacob got a video of the girls flying. The Stripes hive we were sure would die had so little bee's going into winter, they are still weak but getting stronger as spring progresses. It's hard to see on the video but they are bringing in orange and pale yellow almost white pollen, likely from dandelions and crocus plants.
On Saturday Jake and I reduced our "laying" flock down to two. One grandma and one layer, that term being used very loosely. Curious (grandma/pet) and Oh Shiny (layer) were spared from Camp Freezer. Oh Shiny will end up there of course, but I couldn't leave Curious without a companion. Chickens begin to wander around and talk to themselves very loudly if left totally alone. We opted to reduce the flock size because egg production dropped off to nothing again.
The babies in the brooder box inside are getting nice and big, about the size of a small Flicker or a big Robin. It's still too soon for them to go outside as they aren't fully feathered. If it were warmer outside and the nights didn't dip below freezing they would be fine to be outside.
It's official, one of our babies is a rooster. Ugh! Which is fine really we'll just raise him until he starts crowing. Since one of our replacement layer birds has the audacity to be male, I opted to start more chicks and then take the best personalities for egg layers and the rest will go to Camp Freezer. The rooster is the black one speckled with white. Since they are sexlinked chickens the color does matter. Males tend to be grey/white/black, and females black/red.
Yesterday I went to our farm store and got 6 babies. 3 Wyandottes (the black and white ones) and 3 Red Star Sexlinks (the egg yolk ones). Coupled with the original brood box of 2 Black Sexlinks and 1 Buff Orpington, we seem to be over run with babies! It's all good though, I appreciate the meat they'll give us in the end, plus it saves me from breeding the rabbits as intensively.
We managed (so far) to bring both hives through winter. The hive out on a friends property the "Snow hive" is Kicking Ass!! They are strong in number coming into spring which means likely they will swarm. But that could be a good thing because we'd split the hive and then have 3 separate hives. WOOT! The only downside to the Snow hive, they might have Nosema which is like bee dysentery. It can weaken them and eventually kill them. We won't know for sure until they can be tested, and in order to test the hive we have to take a sample, but to take a sample the hive has to be opened and we can't do that until the temperatures are above 60*. But they seem strong, strong enough anyway to last until the temps warm up. The brown streaks are.... what you're thinking. As soon as we have them tested we'll treat with a combination of essential oils.
This is Jake scraping out the dead bees that collect on the bottom of the hive. The girls take care of this in the summer time when they are able to fly. In the winter the dead just pile in the bottom, blocking air flow and thus disease can reign.
The hive at our house is doing good too. We thought for sure they would die off due to such small numbers. But yesterday in the warm sun tons of bee's were flying, so they look promising. I still think we'll have to combine them with another hive just to give them a chance at long term survival. But we'll see. With any luck we'll get honey this year.
Over the last few weeks we've been tearing down the wood, removing the watering system and raking up the mulch in the walkways. Now that the ground is starting to thaw we'll be able (provided we don't get a ton of rain) to rototill the ground and re-shape the raised beds. This is tricky, if we use the rototiller to soon the wet mud will make the ground very compact later in the season. But we can't wait too long because I'll need to plant things quickly. I just might have a late start this season, but the soil health must come first since that's the foundation of everything.
The watering system is low priority since watering by hand won't be an issue until late May. But with any luck we won't need it until June provided we actually get spring rains... who knows anymore?
When I went to pick out the chicks I selected the sex-linked Black Star pullet/girl box. They should be all black, well one of them is developing a white crown on the head. It's a roo...
I ran across a blog about using milk jugs as mini greenhouse's and winter sowing. The website is called WinterSown.org. After paroozing the information I decided to give it a go. Most of these milk jugs were started the first week of March which around here is still very cold. I know you can start mid winter or whenever you get the hankering for hands in dirt. 
