I know I tend to be kind of a chicken proselytizer, always playing up the benefits of chicken-keeping and how easy it is to have hens as pets. Well, there is a darker side to backyard chickens, which I will share with you now... Chickens are jerks.

Okay, much of the time chickens are perfectly nice, and maybe even funny or interesting. But, sometimes, they can be real a**holes, like when they break through fencing boundaries and dig up a bunch of your garden even though they have the whole yard to run around and scratch in and all you're asking is that they stay out of this one space!

Yes, the dirty little secret about backyard chickens is that they can be very destructive to your plants and vegetables. Last week, my hens somehow managed to break into the only two fenced-in areas of the yard and destroy several carefully-tended squash plants. Considering how minimal my garden is this year and how late I started growing things, this was a crushing loss.

When it happened, I was pretty furious. I mean, honestly, they have a HUGE amount of space for three hens. They have weed patches, dirt patches and lots of bushes and trees to hide under. But that wasn't enough for those girls. Oh no! They had to break into my garden.

I guess the moral of this story is that chickens are very curious. When they see a nice green plant surrounded by straw, they really want to get at it. So, build your fences well and watch those chickens closely, or you may find yourself in your backyard one evening shouting swear words at three clueless hens. (This may or may not have happened to me.)

Summer is here, and Dakota decided we were not going to go another month without our deck. Our house is small and we don't have central air conditioning, so it makes life so much better to have that extra outdoor space. The French doors in our kitchen/dining room open onto the deck, and when it was warm enough, we'd eat meals out there. I'm looking forward to doing that again, especially now that our son will be joining us.

Three weekends ago, Dakota got the structural part of the deck all built. Impressively, he did it all by himself, aided only by scaffolding and clamps. That dude is tough. The structure is made of treated lumber, but the actual deck itself will be built using Ipe.

Ipe is a tropical hardwood that is so hard and dense that it's both rot and bug resistant. It also won't need to be sealed or painted. So, that means less work to install and maintain. Of course, it's also more expensive that traditional deck woods like cedar, but since our deck is fairly small, we think it's worth it. This Ipe is FSC certified, so it's supposed to be sustainably harvested. There's some argument on the Internet as to whether this is really possible when you're talking about wood cut down in the Amazon basin. Like many products marketed as sustainable, it's difficult for the consumer to know what to believe.

Dakota got a lot of the Ipe decking down last weekend, and should finish up this weekend.

The wood starts out red, but will eventually fade to a grayish color, much like the unsealed cedar on the chicken coop.

After the deck is down, we're adding galvanized wire "fence" panels between the railing posts to keep all dogs and babies from falling. The hope is to eventually grow vines on panels for privacy and prettiness. There will also be a slanted roof over part of the deck, where we'll put a small dining table for the previously-mentioned outdoor dining.

I can't wait to enjoy cool summer evenings as a family.

We're big coffee drinkers in our family, and, lately, Dakota has been interested in collecting various interesting coffee-making apparatus. So, for Fathers' Day, my son and I got Dakota the ultimate coffee connoisseur's gift: his very own coffee tree.

We picked up a nice-looking 1-gallon coffee tree at Mimosa Nursery in East LA. I read about this nursery several years ago on another Los Angeles gardening blog, and have always wanted to go there. Mimosa is the place to get interesting and exotic fruit trees in Los Angeles.

After a multi-freeway journey, my son and I arrived at Mimosa and were immediately helped by the very friendly owner. (I think he was the owner.) He even showed us over to a bigger coffee tree and gave us some of the red berries to take home and dry. We didn't stay long, but the large lot was covered with all kinds of interesting fruit trees--Jujube, Jack Fruit, Guava--and I definitely plan to go back soon and get something else soon.

The plan for this little coffee tree is to plant it into a larger pot for a while before putting it in the ground somewhere sunny. From what I can tell, a full grown coffee tree can produce a couple of pounds of beans a year. So, we'll be producing some very trendy small-batch, artisanal coffee here on our little urban farm. You can't get more gourmet than that!

Last month, I took some potatoes from our produce delivery service that sprouted in the pantry and planted them in my garden. I put very little effort into my potato patch, since it was more of a small experiment than a real effort to grow potatoes. Plus, I had a rather spectacular failure with potato growing a couple of years ago.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the stalks had died back on all the potato plants, so I decided to go ahead and dig them up. My expectations were low, so I was happy to find a small cluster of tiny yellow potatoes buried under the dirt. I guess I ended up with around 3/4 of a pound. A small crop, but I was happy to have been successful.

I roasted my little crop of tiny taters with olive oil, salt and pepper. They were very tasty! Was it the freshness or the sense of accomplishment? Who can say?

I think next year I might try to grow some more potatoes in a deeper hole. One thing I learned is, in Los Angeles, it's best to grow potatoes in the spring. I think last time the weather was too hot and dry when I started my crop, which made the stalks droopy, which caused me to over-water and rot my seed potatoes. That's my theory anyway.

Good news! Los Angeles residents can now recycle milk and juice cartons in our blue bins. According to a post on Mayor Villaraigosa's website yesterday:

Starting now, you can recycle cartons such as milk, juice, cream and egg substitutes as well as juice boxes, soup, broth, soy milk, and wine cartons. We are now the largest city in the state with a carton recycling program, solidifying our position as the number one recycling city in the nation.

We consume a lot of juice and milk at our house, and I always feel bad throwing those waxy cartons in the trash. Now I don't have to.

Speaking of Los Angeles recycling... I was perusing the Los Angeles Times website the other morning, and came across this excellent feature in the home section. It's called "Can I Recycle?" So far, they've covered plastic wrappers, mesh citrus bags, bottle caps, Tyvek and a few more. Check it out if you live in LA County, as various cities in the area are covered.

I picked this beautiful, bright-red strawberry from one of my potted plants last week. It was delicious.

I think next spring I'm going to try to grow a whole patch. I suspect my son will really enjoy picking and eating them right from the garden.

The only unfortunate side effect of this lack of attention is that the paths get pretty messy and weedy. Last spring, the weed situation got particularly bad (perhaps because our new neighbors let their yard turn into giant patch of dandelions and foxtails). I really didn't want to spend hours pulling up all those weeds, so I decided to go an easier route with cardboard and mulch.



Last week, Dakota stopped by a lot downtown that offers free mulch, courtesy of the The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. They give away mulch and compost at several sites around the city. You can find a location near you here. Dakota filled up a few plastic bins worth, the perfect amount to cover our two small paths.

The mulch itself is very decomposed. It smells more like compost than pine trees, although the scent has faded now that it's been on the paths for a week. While the chunkier, bark-filled mulch might look and smell a bit better, this stuff worked out fine (and did I mention it was free?). I suspect the city lets it decompose more to kill all the weed seeds that are likely mixed in with the tree trimmings.



Before spreading the mulch, I lay down some pieces of cardboard to provide an additional weed barrier. I didn't cover everything perfectly, but, as you know, I'm in a lazy gardening phase. I honestly think the combination of random pieces of cardboard and a thick layer of city mulch should work pretty well for a while. I guess we'll find out this coming spring.