Backyard Chickens & Bees

This afternoon I went to Garden Fever and picked up the bulk of the seeds that I will be planting this year. I think I have worked out the placement for all of the various plant families and how they can all fit together in the 5 raised beds that I will be using. Some [...]

I built a new raised bed in the backyard with the dirt that was recently delivered. Initially, I was planning on making three to four smaller beds (each one being 4′×8′). However, given the sour cherry and plum trees in my backyard and the shade that they provide for the deck in the summer (very [...]

I had a unit of dirt delivered yesterday. It’s around 7.4 cubic yards and is roughly a pile the size of my car. In addition, I had 3 cubic yards of cedar chips delivered alongside the dirt. The dirt is a blend of 1/3 Sandy Loam, 1/3 Garden Mulch compost, and 1/3 chicken mulch that [...]

Cloches. Cold frames. Hot frames. Huh? Yeah, that was my initial thought when I started planning the gardening for this year and looking into ways that could improve the yield and extend the season. I’ve seen many of them around, typically built out of very inexpensive PVC pipe, but never really understood the benefits that [...]

So a few posts ago, I mentioned that we had put together a little grow light station down in the basement for starting out the seeds, but wasn’t sure whether it would do well given the temperature (it’s usually around 55-60 °F down there in the wintertime). Between then and now, I looked into heating [...]

Bees are not indoor pets, which is good, but their hives have to be kept outdoors where they are constantly exposed to the elements. In a rainy environment like what we have in Portland, Oregon, this means that they are exposed to a lot of moisture, especially through the fall, winter, and spring months (although [...]

Yesterday we had our first official CHIC workday of 2009. CHIC is a micro-local Community Home Improvement Collective (I pronounce it ‘chick’, not ‘sheek’) that is composed of several neighbors from my block in the Sabin Neighborhood of NE Portland. Ten people, total. This was started last year by (I think) Carol, up the block, [...]

Many years ago, in 1993, I started brewing my own beer. At first I was mostly just taking the simple approach and using malt extract and brewing five gallon batches, but over time I tried more complicated approaches to enhance the flavor and style I was emulating. When I bought my house in 2003, I [...]

Well, it’s coming up on planting time here in Portland. At least, that’s what all the online sites say. Of course, I don’t mean planting outdoors. I’m talking about getting starts ready from seed so that they’re fairly large and ready to bear fruit when it’s finally warm enough outdoors to put them into the [...]

I went down to Ruhl’s Bee Supply place yesterday with the neighbors to pick up the assembled hives. So, there is no turning back at this point. Each of the hives we bought has two deep frames for the brood and three supers for honey production. All told, the hive stands about 47″ tall (right [...]