a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Bee Food

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    The bees have no shortage of food. There are plants and trees in bloom all over the place. Having plenty of food for the bees from early spring through fall is very helpful for growing crops which need pollinating. You can’t just put out a “help wanted” sign and expect the bees to arrive. They need to be fed all season long. They can’t hang out in their dens waiting for your crops to bloom. They have their lives to live. Have plenty of flowers all the time, and you can guarantee a healthy population of bees to pollinate your crops.

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  • So Much to Learn

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    A baby chick’s time with its mother is all about learning. Can I eat that? What about that wriggly thing? That part is pretty easy to teach. For a chicken, if it moves and can fit in your mouth, it’s food. The more important lessons to learn are how to watch for danger. A shadow in the sky, something moving in the brush, a rooster or hen sounding an alarm, a mother hen teaches her chicks how to hide and be perfectly still. These chicks were born five days ago.

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    Compared to birds whose chicks are helpless in their nests for a long time and who need food delivered to them constantly, chickens have it easy. Within one or two days of hatching, baby chickens are ready to follow their mother wherever she goes. She can go scratching for food, her chicks in tow, and she doesn’t have to take food back to the nest.

  • Late in the Afternoon

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    Late in the afternoon, the hens gather before heading into the chicken yard and their roost for the night. Chickens don’t wear watches or bother to check what time it is on cel phones either. Sun worshippers, they head in when the sun dips low in the sky. In the winter they are indoors by four in the afternoon. In mid summer, they are out until eight or later. They make up for the short summer nights by taking long afternoon naps as they soak in the warm sunshine.

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  • Fallen Beauty

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    The peony petals have fallen. There is a haunting beauty to fallen petals. A last farewell before the memory of their flowers melts away.

  • With Open Arms

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    The shallots are reaching out of the ground with open arms, welcoming as much sunshine as possible. As high as they lift their green arms, shallots stretch their white roots deep into the ground, oozing out sugars and carbohydrates and fats and proteins to feed a host of bacteria and fungi. Dr. Elaine Ingham describes plants as setting out cakes and cookies for these microorganisms. As these bacteria and fungi feed on the cakes and cookies the plants provide them, protozoa and nematodes feed on the bacteria and fungi, and after gorging themselves, leave behind waste at the plants’ roots, full of the nutrition plants need to thrive.

    According to Dr. Ingham, put lime or nitrogen fertilizer on the soil, and you destroy these colonies of microorganisms the plants depend on to feed them. Lime and nitrogen fertilizers are salts, and so they bind up the water in the ground, depriving the microorganisms of the water they need to live. And it’s all unnecessary. The sand, the pebbles, rocks, clay particles in your ground have all the minerals your plants will need for a million years. According to Dr. Ingham, a single grain of sand has all the minerals to supply an entire acre of crops. You don’t need to add any minerals to your gardens. You have an infinite supply in your ground. You will never run out of nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, boron, any of the minerals your plants need. The key to having a thriving garden is getting the correct mix of bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes in your soil. Plants figured out how to do this millions and millions of years ago. It’s our job as gardeners, to make sure the biology plants need, thrives.